Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2009, published 99th ILC session (2010)

Weekly Rest (Commerce and Offices) Convention, 1957 (No. 106) - North Macedonia (Ratification: 1991)

Article 3 of the Convention. Scope of application. The Committee takes due note of the Government’s first detailed report. Noting that at the time of ratification the Government has not made a declaration specifying whether it accepts the obligations of the Convention with respect to persons employed in the types of establishments specified in Article 3(1) of the Convention (i.e. administrative services providing personal services, post and telecommunication services, newspaper undertakings, theatres and places of public entertainment), the Committee requests the Government to indicate in its next report whether the Convention applies to those persons.

Article 6, paragraph 4. Respect for traditions and customs of religious minorities. Noting that the Government’s report is silent on this point, the Committee requests the Government to provide additional explanations in this regard.

Articles 7 and 8. Permanent and temporary exemptions. The Committee notes that section 134 of the Labour Relations Law of 22 July 2005 (Official Gazette No. 62/2005) provides for a weekly rest of at least 24 uninterrupted hours, in principle on Sundays, except when due to objective technical or organizational reasons the employee is granted weekly rest on some other day in the week. Recalling that the Convention allows for temporary exemptions under limited and well-defined conditions of accident, force majeure, urgent work to premises and equipment, abnormal pressure of work, and risk of loss of perishable goods, the Committee requests the Government to provide additional explanations and specify the objective technical or organizational reasons that may render work on the weekly rest day necessary within the meaning of section 134 of the Labour Relations Law. It also requests the Government to indicate whether the representative employers’ and workers’ organizations concerned have been duly consulted in this regard, as prescribed by Article 8(2) of the Convention.

In addition, the Committee notes that under section 136(3) of the Labour Relations Law, the minimum weekly rest determined by law shall be assured as an average calculated over a longer period of time which must not exceed six months in the following cases: (i) when the nature of work requires permanent presence; (ii) when the nature of activity requires continuous provision of work or services; and (iii) when uneven or increased volume of work is foreseen. The Committee recalls, in this connection, that the Convention is articulated around three main principles, i.e. continuity (a period of rest comprising at least 24 consecutive hours), regularity (weekly rest to be enjoyed in every period of seven days), and uniformity (weekly rest to be granted as far as possible simultaneously to the whole of the staff). Therefore, according to the spirit of the Convention, workers should enjoy a minimum period of rest and leisure at regular weekly, or in any event, reasonably short intervals. It is true, of course, that Article 7(1) of the Convention permits to apply special weekly rest schemes to specified categories of persons or specified types of establishments where the nature of the work, the nature of the service performed, the size of the population to be served, or the number of the persons employed make it impossible to comply with the normal weekly rest standard. However, in such cases, as Paragraph 3 of the Weekly Rest (Commerce and Offices) Recommendation, 1957 (No. 103), indicates, persons to whom special weekly rest schemes apply should not work for more than three weeks without receiving the rest periods to which they are entitled. The Committee therefore requests the Government to re-examine the appropriateness of special weekly rest schemes providing for the averaging of weekly rest over a reference period of up to six months and consider the possibility of amending the relevant provision(s) of the Labour Relations Law accordingly.

Article 11. List of exemptions. The Committee would appreciate if the Government would communicate together with its next report a list of the categories of persons and the types of establishments that are subject to special weekly rest schemes as provided for in Article 7 as well as information concerning the circumstances in which temporary exemptions may be granted in accordance with Article 8.

Part V of the report form. Application in practice. The Committee would be grateful if the Government would supply general information on the application of the Convention in practice, including for instance statistics on the number of workers covered by the relevant legislation, extracts from reports of the labour inspection services showing the number of violations observed and sanctions imposed in matters related to weekly rest, copies of any collective agreements containing clauses on weekly rest, etc.