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

The Committee notes 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 comments.

Repetition

Legislative amendments. The Committee notes the Government’s indication in its report that, in the context of the revision of the texts implementing the Labour Code, a technical committee will take the necessary measures to amend the legislation to bring it into full conformity with the Convention and that particular attention will be paid to all sections which have been the subject of comments by the Committee. The Committee expresses the firm hope that the Government’s next report will indicate progress in the revision of the Labour Code to bring it into full conformity with the Convention. The Committee hopes that the Government will take due account in this regard of the points that it recalls below.

Article 3 of the Convention. For several years, the Committee has been referring to 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 recalls that the combination of the conditions laid down in the two sections above 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 requests 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.

Furthermore, the Committee refers to 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 notes 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. Furthermore, the Committee recalls that no penal sanctions should be imposed on a worker for having carried out a peaceful strike and therefore, measures of imprisonment should not be imposed on any account. Such sanctions could be envisaged only where during a strike, violence against persons or property or other serious infringements of rights have been committed, and can be imposed pursuant to legislation punishing such acts. Consequently, the Committee requests the Government to amend section 359 of the Labour Code to remove the prohibition of peaceful occupation of workplaces or their immediate surroundings and to provide for penal sanctions only in cases where action during a strike is not peaceful.