Country Rating: 5+

  • No guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law

  • Workers in countries with the rating 5+ have equally limited rights as workers with the rating 5. However, in countries with the rating 5+ this is linked to dysfunctional institutions as a result of internal conflict and/or military occupation. In such cases countries are assigned the rating 5+.

Oil guards strike: Oil guard workers went on strike calling for better wages and constitutional reform. The strike commenced in June 2013 and virtually stopped production and exports at key terminals in Ras Lanuf, Sedra, Brega and Zoueitina on the central coast. The Government responded by threatening to use military force to bring order to oil sector. The law prohibits anti-union discrimination, but does not provide adequate means of protection against it.

The Labour Code requires that clauses of collective agreements be in conformity with the national economic interest. That provision allows the government to preclude any demand it regards as incompatible with its economic and social preferences. According to section 150 of the Labour Code the exhaustion of all conciliation and arbitration procedures is the only condition for a lawful strike. Collective disputes must be referred to compulsory arbitration at the request of one of the parties or at the discretion of the public authorities, the outcome of which is binding on both parties. As the ILO has noted, this system makes it possible to prohibit virtually all strikes or end them quickly.

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