Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 1996, published 85th ILC session (1997)

Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100) - Uruguay (Ratification: 1989)

The Committee notes the Government's report and the information supplied in answer to its previous direct request on Article 3 of the Convention.

1. With regard to Legislative Decree No. 14785 of 19 June 1978, section 5, which provides that in addition to remuneration in cash, benefits in kind shall be paid to rural workers and members of the family ("wives, children and parents") living with them, the Committee notes the Government's statement that these benefits relate to either the worker's wife or, if the woman is the worker, to her husband. Since the Government explained in its previous reports that this section has been tacitly repealed by subsequent legislation (Act No. 16045 of June 1989, which prohibits any discrimination in employment on grounds of sex, and Act No. 16063 of October 1989, which ratifies the Convention), the Committee would be grateful if the Government would keep it informed in future reports on the application of this provision prohibiting discrimination in employment on grounds of sex.

2. Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention. The Committee recalls that national legislation contains no definition of the terms "remuneration" and "work of equal value" nor any specific reference to the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value. The Committee notes that the Government considers that the principle of the Convention is guaranteed by the provisions of the Constitution and the law which prohibit all discrimination, particularly in respect of remuneration. It also notes that collective agreements submitted to the Executive must contain a clause prohibiting any difference in remuneration between men and women. The Committee notes the information supplied by the Government in its latest report that it has not been possible to find the Decree of 14 September 1987 requested and presumes that it gave information in error about a provision which it had been intended to approve but which had not been approved. Furthermore, it indicates that it urged its labour representatives, each time their negotiators concluded a collective agreement, to incorporate a clause affirming equal remuneration between men and women. The Committee requests the Government to supply as far as possible examples of recent collective agreements which include such clauses.

3. The Committee recalls that the 1989 and 1991 collective agreements for the textile industry establish wage scales differentiated on the basis of sex. Furthermore, clause 77 of the 1991 agreement establishes a bilateral special technical committee whose specific responsibilities include eliminating all references to sex in job classifications and in the definition of certain jobs hitherto regarded as exclusively "female". In this connection, the Committee notes from the statistics supplied by the Government for the first quarter of 1993 that, in both the public and private sectors, women's average earnings are well below those of men in all occupations examined. In its recent report, the Government indicates that in both the public and private sectors there is a large number of workers who negotiate their remuneration by means of collective agreements concluded by their trade unions in which there are officials of both sexes, which guarantees equality, and that for those workers whose minimum wage is fixed by the Government (domestic and rural workers, and minimum national wage) there is no differentiation on the basis of sex.

The Committee urges the Government to take measures to remove all discriminatory provisions from the above-mentioned collective agreements, and any other collective agreements, and to provide particulars of the work done, including the results, by the special technical committee to eliminate wage differentials based on sex in the textile industry.

4. Article 4. The Committee again asks the Government to provide specific information on the methods of cooperation between the Government and employers' and workers' organizations (for example, in the tripartite group on international relations under the chairmanship of the Minister of Labour) to ensure and promote the application to all workers of the principle of equal remuneration for men and women for work of equal value.