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Protection of Wages Convention, 1949 (No. 95) - Solomon Islands (RATIFICATION: 1985)

The Committee notes with regret that the Government’s report has not been received. It hopes that a report will be supplied for examination by the Committee at its next session and that it will contain full information on the matters raised in its previous direct request, which read as follows:

Article 16 of the Convention. Full information on measures giving effect to the provisions of the Convention. The Committee has been commenting for a number of years on the absence of specific legislative provisions giving effect to the provisions of Article 2(2) of the Convention (protection of wages of domestic workers), Article 10 (attachment and assignment of wages), Article 11 (protection of wage claims in the case of bankruptcy of the employer concerning those who are not covered by the Companies Act), Article 12(1) (regular payment of wages), and Article 13(1) (payment on working days only and at or near the workplace).

In reply to these comments, the Government maintained that no particular problem had been encountered in the application of the Convention in practice and therefore no steps had been taken for the adoption of any additional laws or regulations. In this connection, the Committee wishes to refer to paragraph 510 of its 2003 General Survey on the protection of wages in which it emphasized that the mere fact that certain procedures or practices may not have given rise to complaints, or that certain practices which have to be controlled under the terms of the Convention do not exist or are unlikely to occur in some countries, does not absolve the governments of those countries from their obligation to give specific legislative expression, when necessary, to the standards set out in the Convention.

Moreover, in its last report, the Government stated that a labour law reform was currently under way in collaboration with employers’ and workers’ organizations, and that the various issues raised in the Committee’s comments will be reviewed in the framework of this reform. The Committee hopes that the review process will be completed shortly and that concrete progress will be made on the application of the abovementioned provisions.

Part V of the report form. Application in practice. The Committee requests the Government to supply all available information on the manner in which the Convention is applied in practice, including for instance, extracts from official reports, statistics on inspection visits indicating the number of infringements reported and sanctions imposed, and any other information bearing on the practical implementation of the requirements laid down in the Convention.