North Macedonia

"Article 3. Right of organizations to freely organize their activities and to formulate their programmes. In its previous comments the Committee had noted that, under the Law on Public Enterprises and the Law on Employees in the Public Sector: (1) employees in the public sector are obliged to provide minimum services in the event of strikes, taking into account the rights and interests of citizens and legal entities; and (2) the head of the respective institution determines the performance of the institutional activities of public interest that are to be maintained during a strike, the manner in which the minimum service will be carried out and the number of employees that will provide services during the strike. In this respect, the Committee had recalled that the maintenance of minimum services in the event of strikes should only be possible in the following situations: (i) in services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population (essential services in the strict sense of the term); (ii) other services in which strikes of a certain magnitude and duration could cause an acute crisis threatening the normal conditions of existence of the population; (iii) in public services of fundamental importance; and (iv) to ensure the security of facilities and the maintenance of equipment. The Committee had further recalled that minimum services imposed should meet at least two requirements: (i) they must genuinely and exclusively be minimum services, that is limited to the operations which are strictly necessary to meet the basic needs of the population or the minimum requirements of the service, while maintaining the effectiveness of the pressure brought to bear; and (ii) since this system restricts one of the essential means of pressure available to workers to defend their interests, their organizations should be able, if they so wish, to participate in defining such a service, along with employers and the public authorities. The Committee had requested the Government to amend the legislation so as to ensure that the determination of minimum services in public enterprises conformed with the situations described above, and to provide further information concerning such determination in practice (in particular as to the types of activities, and percentage of employees in those activities, that have been affected by a determination of minimum services, as well as the possibility for employee organizations to participate in the definition of minimum services)."

"The Committee recalls that it had previously requested the Government to amend section 38(7) of the Law on Primary Education and section 25(2) of the Law on Secondary Education, which oblige the school directors to provide for the realization of educational activities by replacing the striking employees when the educational activity is interrupted due to a strike. The Committee notes the Government’s indication that while it has not yet amended the above-mentioned legislation, in practice, these provisions were not referred to during the education strike in April 2022 organized by the Trade Union for Education, Science and Culture and no substitute workers were used. The Committee further notes the Government’s commitment to remove the above provisions during the next amendments to the Law on Primary Education and the Law on Secondary Education. The Committee expects the Government to proceed without further delay to amending theLaw on Primary Education and the Law on Secondary Education, so as to remove the possibility of replacing striking workers and to enable workers in the primary and secondary education sectors to effectively exercise their right to strike. The Committee requests the Government to provide a copy of the amended legal texts once adopted."