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

Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87) - Mauritania (Ratification: 1961)

Article 3 of the Convention. In its previous comments concerning sections 268 and 273 of the Labour Code on the conditions which must be fulfilled to be a member of a trade union or to be eligible to hold office as a manager or administrator, the Committee recalled that the combination of the two conditions laid down in the above sections may infringe the right of organizations to elect their representatives in full freedom by preventing the election of qualified persons or by depriving unions of the experience of certain officers when they are unable to provide enough qualified persons from among their own ranks. The Committee therefore invited the Government to make the eligibility conditions more flexible, for example by exempting from the occupational requirement a reasonable proportion of the officers of an organization.

The Committee’s previous comments also concerned section 359 of the Labour Code, which provides that the exercise of the right to strike may not be accompanied by occupation of the workplace or its immediate surroundings, under penalty of the penal sanctions established by Book VIII of the Code. The Committee also noted that, according to section 361, if a worker, during the course of a strike, even where it is lawful, is in breach of the obligations and prohibitions set forth in section 359, he or she is guilty of serious misconduct giving grounds for dismissal without entitlement to compensation in lieu of notice, severance allowance or damages. The Committee recalls that restrictions on strike pickets and workplace occupations should be limited to cases where the action ceases to be peaceful or to cases where respect of the freedom to work of non-strikers or the right of the management to enter the premises of the enterprise are hindered. The Committee therefore asked the Government to amend section 359 so as to limit the prohibition and, hence, the possibility of dismissing workers, to cases in which the action is not peaceful.

The Committee notes that the Government indicates in its report the possibility of examining the amendments requested to the sections of the Labour Code which are the subject of comments by the Committee in the process under way of revising the texts implementing the Labour Code. The Committee hopes that in its next report, the Government will give an account of concrete progress made in the revision of the Labour Code (through the adoption of implementing texts or any other measures) to bring it into full conformity with the Convention on the two points raised in the present direct request.