Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2007, published 97th ILC session (2008)

For many years, the Committee has been drawing the Government’s attention to the need for suitable measures to compensate the involuntary unemployed. Although the principle of assisting workers who have involuntarily lost their jobs was established by Act No. 86-845 of 17 July 1986, Decision No. 91-029 AT of 24 July 1991 on placement and employment, the procedures for applying it were not such as to enable compliance with the obligations arising from the Convention. In its last report, the Government indicates that the measures taken so far to implement the abovementioned texts and which established work of general interest (CIG) has been revoked and replaced by National Law No. 2006-07 of 20 February 2006 introducing an “agreement for integration through activity” (CPIA) which, however, has the same features as the CIG and cannot, according to the Government’s report, legally be considered as establishing assistance for workers involuntarily deprived of their employment. Grant of the CPIA could in theory be prevented where funds are exhausted or unavailable or in the absence of a body to deal with jobseekers. Nevertheless, according to the Government’s report, all applications to the Employment, Training and Vocational Integration Service have in practice been met and there has been no request from the social partners for an unemployment insurance system to be established.

The Committee takes note of this information. It observes that, like the CIG, the CPIA is one of a set of employment assistance measures to facilitate recruitment, particularly of workers who have lost their jobs involuntarily, and to provide them with an allowance when they carry out an activity for a particular body (private sector company, branch of the administration, public establishment, commune or association). The Committee recalls that by accepting the obligations under the Convention, the Government committed itself to establish and implement an unemployment protection scheme that provides the involuntary unemployed with benefit, or an allowance, or a combination of benefit and allowance, as required by Article 1, paragraph 1, of the Convention. The Committee is bound to observe, as did the Government, that like the texts it replaced, National Law No. 2006-07 of 20 February 2006 establishing the CPIA does not establish a scheme that is in conformity with the Convention, i.e. either a compulsory insurance scheme, or a voluntary insurance scheme, or a combination of compulsory and voluntary insurance schemes, or any of these alternatives combined with a complementary assistance scheme. Furthermore, the Convention also provides that the scheme must cover all persons to which the Convention applies, namely all persons habitually employed for wages or salary, and must not allow any of these to be denied the benefit of the scheme because funds are lacking. The Committee would draw the Government’s attention once again to Article 9 of the Convention, under which entitlement to receive benefit or an allowance may be made conditional upon the acceptance of employment on relief works organized by a public authority. It also points out that the Convention does not seek to protect all jobseekers, but only those who have lost their employment. Thus, Article 6 of the Convention allows the right to receive benefit or an allowance to be made contingent on the completion of a qualifying period. In these circumstances, the Committee hopes that the Government will be able to reconsider this matter and that it will indicate the measures taken or envisaged to give full effect to the provisions of the Convention.