Observation (CEACR) - adopted 2006, published 96th ILC session (2007)

Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111) - Chile (Ratification: 1971)

1. Article 3(b) of the Convention. The Committee notes the adoption of Act No. 20034 of 5 July 2005 merging the ranks of male and female police officers, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Decree No. 84 of 12 April 2005, adopting the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. It also notes the Bill establishing legal machinery for complaints of arbitrary discrimination which allows claims to the reinstatement of rights and proper redress to be processed rapidly and which may be applied to the instances of discrimination at work set forth in the Convention. The Committee requests the Government to keep it informed of the Bill’s progress.

2. Article 3(c). The Committee has for many years asked the Government to amend section 349 of the Commercial Code which provides that, unless she married under the separate estate regime, a woman may not enter into a commercial partnership agreement without special permission from her husband. The Committee trusts that the Government will take the necessary steps to amend section 349 of the Commercial Code to ensure that women, regardless of their marital status and the matrimonial economic regime they and their husbands choose, no longer require prior authorization from their husbands to enter into commercial partnerships so that they may carry on their professional activities on an equal footing with men.

3. Discrimination on ground of political opinion. For more than ten years, the Committee has carried on an exchange with the Government in which it has sought the express repeal of certain legislative decrees (Nos. 112 and 139 of 1973, 473 and 762 of 1974, 1321 and 1412 of 1976) allowing the rectors of Chilean universities broad discretion to abolish academic and administrative posts. The Committee has also sought the express repeal of section 55 of Legislative Decree No. 153 on the Legal Status of the University of Chile, and the Legal Status of the University of Santiago de Chile under which teachers, students and administrative staff may be expelled from or refused admission to these two institutions because of their political activities. In the course of that exchange, the Government has stressed that the abovementioned provisions do not apply as they have been tacitly repealed. The Committee noted in its comments of 2003 that the draft framework law submitted in 1997 for the preparation of new statutes for state universities establishing that such statutes may not include provisions that are discriminatory, had been shelved. The Committee therefore requests the Government once again to take the necessary steps to bring the national legislation into line with the provisions of the Convention.

4. Indigenous peoples. In its comments of 2003, the Committee noted the results of the Sixth National Socio-economic Survey, 1996 (CASEN 96), sent by the Government, and observed that in terms of income distribution and average income there was a marked segregation of indigenous people from the non-indigenous population. It also noted that 67.9 per cent of indigenous women were not active, while the figure for men was 24.2 per cent. Furthermore, with regard to economic activity, the majority of indigenous workers were concentrated in agriculture and fishing (25 per cent) and in unskilled work (31.2 per cent). The illiteracy rate was 10 per cent for indigenous people as compared with 4.4 per cent for non-indigenous people. Some 54.9 per cent of young indigenous persons under 25 years of age attend an educational institution as compared with 61.6 per cent of non-indigenous young people. In view of these figures, the Committee asks once again the Government to supply information on the measures being taken to ensure equality of opportunity in employment and occupation for the country’s indigenous peoples. It requests the Government to provide such information in its next report.

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