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Hours of Work (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1930 (No. 30) - Kuwait (RATIFICATION: 1961)

Article 1 of the Convention. Scope of application. The Committee requests the Government to refer to its comments made under Articles 1 and 2 of the Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1).

Article 7(2)(b) and (d). Temporary exceptions. The Committee notes that section 66 of the new Private Sector Labour Law No. 6 of 2010, which essentially reproduces section 34 of the Previous Law No. 38 of 1964, provides that employees may be requested to perform overtime if this is necessary for avoiding a certain loss or completing such work exceeding the daily required work. The Committee recalls that under Article 7(2) of the Convention temporary exceptions may only be granted in specific and narrowly-defined circumstances, including the need to prevent the loss of perishable goods or avoid endangering the technical results of the work; as well as enable establishments to deal with cases of abnormal pressure of work due to special circumstances, in so far as the employer cannot ordinarily be expected to resort to other measures. In contrast, the formulation used in section 66 of the private sector labour law appears too broad as compared to the authorized scope of temporary exceptions under the Convention. The Committee therefore requests the Government to take the necessary action to ensure that the exceptions provided for in section 66 of the new Private Sector Labour Law No. 6 of 2010 are strictly limited to the exceptions provided for in Article 7(2) of the Convention.

Article 7(3). Limit on the number of additional hours. The Committee requests the Government to refer to its comments made under Article 6(2) of Convention No. 1.

Finally, the Committee draws the Government’s attention to the conclusions of the ILO Tripartite Meeting of Experts on Working Time Arrangements, held in October 2011, according to which the provisions of existing ILO standards relating to daily and weekly hours of work, weekly rest, paid annual leave, part time and night work, remain relevant in the twenty-first century, and should be promoted in order to facilitate decent work. The Experts also emphasized the importance of working time, its regulation, and organization and management, to: (a) workers and their health and well-being, including opportunities for balancing working and non-work time; (b) the productivity and competitiveness of enterprises; and (c) effective responses to economic and labour market crises.