Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2024, published 113rd ILC session (2025)

Tripartite Consultation (International Labour Standards) Convention, 1976 (No. 144) - Togo (Ratification: 1983)

Article 5(1) and (2) of the Convention. Effective tripartite consultations at regular intervals. Since the ratification of the Convention by Togo, the Committee has repeatedly requested detailed information on the tripartite consultations held on the matters referred to in Article 5(1) of the Convention. In this regard, the Committee notes with regret that the Government, in its last report received in 2022, merely reiterates largely the same information as that provided in its previous report in 2017. The Committee therefore urges the Government to provide detailed information on the content and outcome of tripartite consultations held on all the matters referred to in Article 5(1) of the Convention, namely: (i) government replies to questionnaires concerning items on the agenda of the International Labour Conference and government comments on proposed texts to be discussed by the Conference; (ii) the submission of Conventions and Recommendations to the competent national authorities for examination; (iii) the re-examination of unratified Conventions and of Recommendations to which effect has not yet been given, to consider what measures might be taken to promote their implementation and ratification as appropriate; (iv) questions arising out of reports on the application of international labour standards; and (v) proposals for the denunciation of ratified Conventions.

Article 3(1). Free choice of employers’ and workers’ representatives. The Committee notes that section 3 of Decree No. 2022-022/PR of 23 February 2022 provides that persons may not exercise responsibility for the administration or direction of a union who have received a conviction involving loss of civic rights or a conviction to a correctional penalty, with the exception of: (a) convictions for offences involving imprudence, except in case of hit-and-run offences; and (b) convictions for misdemeanours for which the penalty is not subject to proof of bad faith and which only involve liability to a fine, with the exception of misdemeanours qualified as offences by company laws. Noting that these provisions are identical to those of section 14 of the new Labour Code, the Committee refers to its 2023 comments on the application of Article 3 of the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87), recalling that a conviction for an act the nature of which is not such as to call into question the integrity of the person concerned and is not such as to prejudice the performance of trade union duties should not constitute grounds for disqualification from trade union office, and requests the Government to provide information on any measures taken or envisaged to ensure that representatives of employers and workers are freely chosen, in accordance with Article 3(1) of Convention No. 144.

The Committee is raising other matters in a request addressed directly to the Government.