Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2008, published 98th ILC session (2009)

Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (No. 1) - Argentina (Ratification: 1933)

Articles 2 and 4 of the Convention. Hours of work in ports. Further to its previous comments, the Committee notes the Government’s statement that port workers’ individual rights in respect of working time have been protected by the Office for the supervision of work in ports, at sea, on rivers and on lakes since it reopened in December 2005, in collaboration with the Occupational Risks Supervisory Authority (SRT). It also notes the information that properly registered collective agreements establish the system for calculating hours of work where they exceed eight hours a day. The Committee notes in this connection that the collective agreements on port work supplied by the Government – namely collective labour agreements No. 441/06 of 30 November 2005 and No. 457/06 of 8 August 2006 – provide for the possibility of extending the maximum daily hours of work by up to four hours and eight hours respectively. The Committee points out that the Convention allows the limit of eight hours a day and 48 hours a week to be exceeded only in very limited and clearly defined circumstances. In shift work in general, the Convention allows workers to exceed eight hours a day and 48 hours a week provided that the average hours of work calculated over a period of three weeks or less does not exceed eight per day and 48 per week (Article 2(c)); in the case of shift work in processes which are required to be carried on continuously (for example blast furnaces, refineries, chemical industry, cement industry, salt mines, etc.), the Convention allows these limits to be circumvented provided that the hours of work do not exceed 56 a week on average (Article 4). The Committee requests the Government to take the necessary steps to ensure that any authorization of overtime in the port sector complies fully with these requirements. It also asks the Government to indicate whether work in ports is treated as a process which is required to be carried on continuously within the meaning of Article 4 of the Convention.

Part VI of the report form. Practical application. The Committee requests the Government to provide general information on the manner in which the Convention is applied in practice including, for instance, statistics on the number of workers covered by the legislation, the number of contraventions reported in respect of hours of work and the penalties imposed, extracts from reports on the work of the Office for the supervision of work in ports, at sea, on rivers and on lakes and of the SRT, copies of relevant collective agreement, etc.