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The Committee notes the information supplied in the Government's reports, and the comments received from the Austrian Federation of Chambers of Labour.

1. The Committee notes from the Government's reports that the Equal Treatment Committee has, inter alia, examined the issue of discriminatory provisions in collective agreements, and that it endeavours to bring its influence to bear on the collective bargaining parties to remove the remaining discriminatory provisions from collective agreements. The Committee notes that only a few collective agreements still contain discriminatory provisions, as concerns social allowances. It notes that separate wage rates persist only in a few collective agreements in the food and allied industry, where an adjustment between men's and women's wages has not yet been fully completed, but where the bargaining partners have agreed to complete the staged process of abolishing the different wage rates at an early date. The Committee requests the Government to continue to supply information on the progress achieved in eliminating discriminatory provisions in collective agreements, in particular as concerns those provisions establishing separate wage rates for men and women in the food and allied industries and on the action taken by the Equal Treatment Committee in that respect.

2. In this connection, the Committee recalls that it had raised the possibility, in its previous comments, that the provisions of individual employment contracts or collective agreements which run counter to the principle of equal remuneration might be deemed null and void; it referred to paragraph 175 of its 1986 General Survey on Equal Remuneration in which it is stated that this is the practice in certain countries. The Committee notes that the Committee of Independent Experts on the European Social Charter noted, in its 1988 report, that section 879 of the Austrian Civil Code provides that a contract contrary to prohibitions contained in law or to public morality is null and void, and concluded that clauses of collective agreements or individual employment contracts contrary to the principle of equal remuneration which appears at section 2 of the Equality of Treatment Act of 23 February 1979 would be void. That Committee asked for recent jurisprudence on the matter. The present Committee asks for further information in this connection.

3. In its previous comments the Committee noted that wages relating to activities carried out exclusively or mainly by women were normally at a lower level than for jobs carried out by men and drew the Government's attention to Article 3 of the Convention concerning the objective appraisal of jobs. The Committee notes from the Government's reports that wage fixing in Austria is carried out by means of collective bargaining and is thus independent of state influence, but that the collective bargaining parties are obliged to observe the principle of equal remuneration embodied in the Equality of Treatment Act. It further notes that under the Austrian collective bargaining system agreements are concluded at a sectoral level, and that therefore, an objective evaluation system which would be valid for all sectors and allow comparison of totally dissimilar activities seems impossible to establish; but that a scientific job evaluation system can be drawn up only by the collective bargaining parties for the sector within their own jurisdiction.

The Committee notes the comments by the Austrian Federation of Chambers of Labour to the effect that statistically, the average income of women in Austria is generally well below that of men; that the Equality of Treatment Act of 1979 has been responsible for the removal of glaring sex-determined inequalities in collective agreements; but that the Equality of Treatment Committee has so far not done enough to settle the basic question of what constitutes work of equal value. The Austrian Federation of Chambers of Labour states that with reference to Articles 2 and 3 of Convention No. 100, the parties to the collective agreement are called upon to make greater use of their opportunity to establish methods of job appraisal; the Equality of Treatment Committee has been given the task of encouraging such activities by the parties to the collective agreement and of providing expert assistance.

The Committee further notes from the Government's report that the Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs has submitted for approval the draft of a further amendment to the Equality of Treatment Act, with the primary objective of extending the scope of the equality of treatment principle and improving the machinery for implementation, which would include a regulation on equality of treatment in wage fixing stating clearly that in systems of job classification for the purpose of establishing wages and salaries no differentiated criteria should be applied as regards men's and women's work.

As concerns the Government's remarks concerning the difficulty of establishing a job evaluation system which would be valid across the entire economy, the Committee readily recognises this problem. It points out that job evaluation schemes which affect a sector of the economy, or even a single employer, are fully consistent with Article 3 of the Convention. It refers the Government to paragraphs 138 to 152 of its 1986 General Survey in this regard.

The Committee requests the Government to continue to supply detailed information on the measures taken or envisaged to promote the use of systems of objective appraisal of jobs on the basis of the work to be performed in the various economic sectors.