Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2009, published 99th ILC session (2010)

Article 1 of the Convention. Forty-hour week. Averaging of hours of work. In its previous direct request, the Committee noted that, while section 115 of the Labour Code establishes 40 hours as the normal working week, section 123 of the Labour Code allows for the averaging of hours of work over a period of no more than one year, in which case daily hours of work may not exceed 12 hours. The Committee draws the Government’s attention to the negative consequences that excessive daily hours of work may have on the health of workers and on the balance between working and private life. It therefore considers that the averaging of hours of work over a reference period which may be as long as one year allows too many exceptions to the principle of the 40-hour week and makes it difficult to achieve the objective of the progressive reduction of working time. Furthermore, the establishment of such a system for the arrangement of working time should only be possible in well-determined cases. In this respect, if the Committee refers once again to Paragraph 12 of the Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation, 1962 (No. 116), which refers to the possibility of the calculation of normal hours of work as an average over a period longer that one week “when special conditions in certain branches of activity or technical needs justify it”. The Committee requests the Government to provide detailed information on the systems for the arrangement of hours of work established under section 123 of the Labour Code, including particulars on the number of workers and the types of enterprises concerned. The Government is also requested to indicate the measures adopted or envisaged to reduce daily hours of work and the reference period in the context of such systems.

Overtime hours. The Committee notes that, under section 124 of the Labour Code, overtime hours may be performed by workers with their consent. However, it notes that this provision does not determine the cases in which the performance of overtime hours may be allowed (such as to enable the enterprise to cope with abnormal pressure of work). In this respect, the Committee refers to Paragraph 14 of Recommendation No. 116, under the terms of which the competent national authorities should determine the circumstances and limits in which exceptions to the normal hours of work may be permitted permanently, temporarily or periodically. It also refers to paragraph 79 of its General Survey of 1984 on working time, in which it emphasized that “undue facilitation of overtime, for example, by not limiting the circumstances in which it may be permitted or by allowing relatively high maximums, could in the most egregious cases tend to defeat the Recommendation’s objective of a social standard of a 40-hour week and make irrelevant the provisions as to normal working hours”. The Committee therefore requests the Government to provide further information on the effect given to the provisions of the Labour Code respecting the regulation of overtime hours, and particularly on the measures adopted or envisaged to limit the cases in which they are allowed.

Part V of the report form. Application in practice. The Committee requests the Government to provide up to date information in its next report on the application of the Convention in practice including, for instance, extracts from reports of the labour inspection services, including particulars of the number and nature of the contraventions reported with regard to hours worked in excess of the 40-hour week; statistics of the categories and number of workers to whom the principle of the 40-hour week has been applied and the number of overtime hours worked in excess of the 40-hour week by these workers; the categories and number of workers to whom the principle of the 40‑hour week has not as yet been applied and the normal hours of work of these workers, as well as the number of overtime hours worked; copies of studies or official reports on questions relating to working time, particularly with regard to the reduction of working time in connection with new technologies or as an employment policy measure, especially in the context of the current global economic crisis; and, finally, information on systems for the arrangement of working time envisaged in recent collective agreements.