Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2014, published 104th ILC session (2015)

Forty-Hour Week Convention, 1935 (No. 47) - Russian Federation (Ratification: 1956)

Article 1 of the Convention. Forty-hour week. In reply to its previous comment, the Committee notes the Government’s explanations that under certain conditions provided for under section 97 of the Labour Code, an employer may engage a worker for an overtime period beyond the statutory working time applicable to that worker under the Labour Code or under other Federal laws or collective agreements, arrangements, local regulations or an employment contract. In this respect, the Government indicates the conditions under which overtime may be required with the written consent of the worker and the circumstances where an employer may ask a worker to perform overtime without his/her consent. The Committee observes that the Government’s report essentially reproduces information provided in its previous report and does not indicate any new legislative or other measures that would further implement the Convention, in particular as regards overly long reference period of one year for the averaging of hours of work. In this connection, the Committee draws the Government’s attention to the negative effects that an excessive working day can have on the health of workers and on the balance between their private life and work. Furthermore, the implementation of such working time arrangements should be possible only in well-defined cases. In this regard, the Committee once again refers to Paragraph 12 of the Reduction of Hours of Work Recommendation, 1962 (No. 116), which mentions the possibility of calculating normal hours of work as an average over a period longer than one week “when special conditions in certain branches of activity or technical needs justify it”. The Committee therefore requests the Government to continue to provide information on the measures taken or envisaged to reduce the daily hours of work and the reference period applied in the context of such arrangements.