Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2015, published 105th ILC session (2016)

Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98) - Tunisia (Ratification: 1957)

The Committee notes the observations of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), received in 2013 and 2014, and those received on 1 September 2015. It notes that these observations denounce legal provisions that limit the right to collective bargaining by giving the Secretariat of State for Youth, Sports and Social Affairs powers that are too broad to grant approval and impose penalties with regard to collective agreements at the branch level (sections 38 and 41 of the Labour Code), or by restricting the possibility of concluding enterprise agreements (section 44 of the Labour Code). Moreover, the Committee notes that the ITUC denounces disputes on the implementation of collective agreements in 2014 in a case concerning the remuneration of refuse workers at the national level and in another case concerning a biscuit-making enterprise. The Committee recalls in its 2012 General Survey on the fundamental Conventions, paragraph 201, that in its view, a provision establishing the obligation to submit collective agreements for prior approval by the authorities is only compatible with the Convention when it is confined to stipulating that approval may be refused if the agreement has a procedural flaw or does not conform to the minimum standards laid down by general labour legislation. Any provision that authorizes in general terms the evaluation or cancellation of collective agreements by the authorities is liable, in principle, to give rise to problems of compatibility with the Convention. While appreciating the information provided on the subjects covered by collective bargaining in 2014 in the public and private sectors, the Committee requests the Government to reply to the observations of the ITUC referred to above. In particular, the Committee requests the Government to specify the criteria applied in practice by the authorities to grant or deny approval pursuant to section 38 of the Labour Code, or to annul a collective agreement in force pursuant to section 41 of the Labour Code.