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Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87) - Peru (RATIFICATION: 1960)

Other comments on C087

Observation

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The Committee recalls below the points it has emphasized in its previous comments and which require the adoption of specific measures to bring the legislation into full conformity with the Convention.

Article 3. Rights of organizations to organize their activities and formulate their programmes. Strikes by public servants. The Committee previously requested the Government to revise section 81 of the General Regulations of the Civil Service Act, adopted in 2014, which prohibits atypical forms of strikes such as staggered stoppages, labour slowdowns, go-slow strikes or working to rule, the deliberate reduction in performance or any type of action in which civil servants remain in the workplace or obstruct the entrance to the workplace. In this respect, the Government indicated that on 13 April 2022, by means of Ministerial Decision No. 092-2022-TR, a preliminary draft of the Labour Code prepared by the Ministry of Labour and Employment Promotion was pre-published. The draft includes in section 425 the possibility of carrying out other types of strikes, such as wild-cat strikes, stoppages in central areas or essential sections of the enterprise, labour slowdowns, go-slows or work to rule, deliberate reductions in performance or other action to paralyse work at the workplace. The Government also indicated that it received comments and suggestions regarding the preliminary draft from the public up to the month of June, and that the draft had been shared with the workers’ and employers’ representatives on the National Labour and Employment Promotion Council. The Committee noted that the trade union confederations called for the adoption of urgent measures to ensure that the restrictions imposed on the right to strike in the public and private sectors were removed without delay. The Committee expressed the hope that the preliminary draft of the Labour Code would be subject to thorough tripartite consultations and that, in the framework of that dialogue process, specific measures would be introduced without delay to revise section 18 of the General Regulations of the Civil Service Act, as indicated. The Committee requests the Government to provide information on any developments in this regard.

Replacement of striking workers in the education sector. The Committee previously requested the Government to engage in consultations with the relevant trade unions, with a view to revising the Regulations implementing Act No. 28988 declaring regular basic education to be an essential public service (Supreme Decree No. 017-2007-ED), to clarify the situations in which striking workers may be replaced and to ensure that such replacement may only take place in the event of strikes that are declared unlawful in conformity with the Convention. The Committee recalled that, although under section 4 of the Regulations the national register of supply teachers may only be used in the event of unlawful strikes, one ground for unlawfulness being the failure to ensure minimum services, section 3 of the Regulations prohibits any form of stoppage of education services by a unilateral decision of the staff mentioned, irrespective of the reason invoked, and that the preceding phrase is used to denominate the strike and the manner in which it is carried out. In this respect, the Government indicated that: (i) sections 7 to 14 of the above-mentioned Regulations were repealed by Supreme Decree No. 001-2019-MINEDU; and (ii) with regard to the recruitment of teachers, Supreme Decree No. 015-2020 provides that in case of a suspension or interruption of the education service in education institutions due to work stoppages or strikes, irrespective of how they are denominated or whether or not they are found to be inappropriate or unlawful, the director of the education institute, within 24 hours of the beginning of the interruption of work, shall propose the recruitment of the teachers required to ensure the continuity of the education service. The Government also indicated that this regulation is based on the State’s objective of ensuring quality education and improving student learning, which could not be guaranteed if students did not receive the necessary classes and undertake minimum hours of study. For their part, the trade union confederations highlighted that the objectives of quality education and the improvement of learning achievement, which were also shared by the confederations, were fully compatible with the principles of freedom of association enshrined in the Convention. The Committee once again requests the Government to engage in consultations with the relevant trade unions, with a view to revising the Regulations and Supreme Decree to clarify the situations in which striking workers may be replaced and to ensure that such replacement may only take place in the event of strikes that are declared illegal in conformity with the Convention.