Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2003, published 92nd ILC session (2004)

The Committee notes the report provided by the Government and the adoption of Presidential Decree No. 02-250 of 24 July 2002 issuing regulations respecting public contracts. It notes that these new regulations, and particularly section 50, do not appear to give effect to Article 2 of the Convention which requires that public contracts explicitly include clauses ensuring to the workers concerned wages, hours of work and other conditions of labour which are not less favourable than those established by means of one of the three alternative means specified in the Convention, namely collective agreement, arbitration award or national laws or regulations. The Committee therefore requests the Government to provide with its next report copies of the public contracts in force in Algeria so that it can determine whether they contain clauses giving effect to Article 2 of the Convention. In practical terms, the Committee wishes to be provided with copies of the schedules of general administrative clauses and of common requirements, as well as the related ministerial orders envisaged in section 9 of the Decree issuing regulations respecting public contracts.

The Committee recalls in this respect that the fundamental objective of the Convention is to ensure to workers employed by an entrepreneur and paid indirectly through public funds, through the inclusion of appropriate labour clauses in public contracts, wages and conditions of labour that are at least as satisfactory as the wages and conditions normally established for the type of work in question, whether they are determined by collective agreement or otherwise. Noting that the Government has continued to refer for over ten years to Act No. 90-11 of 21 April 1990 respecting labour relations and Act No. 88-07 of 25 January 1988 respecting health, safety and occupational medicine, as if their application sufficed in itself to give effect to the provisions of the Convention, the Committee is bound to reiterate its previous comments on this matter. It recalls that the labour clauses which have to be explicitly included in public contracts must not be less favourable than those established for workers performing similar work. As a consequence, when the wages and other conditions of labour applicable to a substantial proportion of the workers in a trade or industry are established by collective agreement, the Committee is of the opinion that effect would not be given to the Convention in the event that the conditions of labour applicable to workers in enterprises that have concluded public contracts were less favourable than those deriving from the above collective agreements. The Committee also considers that the application to workers in the contracting enterprises of conditions of labour corresponding to the statutory minimum levels is not such as to comply with Article 2 of the Convention unless such conditions are also those applicable to workers performing work of the same character. The Committee hopes that the Government will take all the necessary measures to give full effect to this provision of the Convention without further ado and that it will provide detailed information in this respect.

[The Government is asked to reply in detail to the present comments in 2004.]