Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2005, published 95th ILC session (2006)

Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) - Cambodia (Ratification: 1999)

The Committee notes with regret that the Government’s report has not been received. It hopes that a report will be supplied for examination by the Committee at its next session and that it will contain full information on the matters raised in its previous direct request.

The Committee further notes the comments on the application of the Convention submitted by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in a communication of 31 August 2005, concerning more particularly anti-union dismissals of trade union officers and the failure of the legal system to protect them, the exclusion of teachers and household servants from the scope of the Labour Law and the fact that only five collective agreements have been registered in the Ministry of Labour. The Committee requests the Government to send its observations thereon.

Articles 4 and 6 of the Convention. The Committee had observed previously that, according to section 1 of the Labour Law, certain categories of workers, which include persons appointed to a temporary or a permanent post in the public service, are not covered by this legislation. According to the ICFTU, the Labour Law does not apply to civil servants; moreover the Committee on Freedom of Association (see 334th Report, paragraphs 202-226) had requested the Government to take the necessary measures to amend the Common Statutes of Civil Servants so as to guarantee fully the right to collective bargaining of civil servants not engaged in the administration of the State and to diffuse widely these amendments, once adopted, among the local public authorities including the local educational administration. In this respect, the Committee recalls that a distinction must be drawn between, on the one hand, public servants who by their functions are directly employed in the administration of the State and who may be excluded from the scope of the Convention and, on the other hand, all other persons employed by the State, by public enterprises or by autonomous public institutions and who should benefit from the guarantees provided for in the Convention. The Committee therefore requests once again the Government to indicate in its next report whether the categories of workers in question benefit from the guarantees provided for in the Convention under other legal provisions and, if not, to take the necessary measures in order to ensure the application of the Convention to these categories of workers and to keep it informed on measures taken or envisaged in respect of the abovementioned points.