By The Daily Star

Saturday, February 12, 2011

BEIRUT: A new draft labor law will end gender discrimination, boost worker safety and reward seniority, said caretaker Labor Minister Butros Harb.

“This [draft] could be considered a ‘Code of Labor’ due to its huge importance and not a normal labor law,” Harb told a news conference Friday at the headquarters of the Cabinet in Mathaf, where he outlined the key features of the newly completed draft legislation.

The draft law was not distributed to the media, as it is believed to require fine-tuning. Harb said it would be signed and sent to the Shura Council for review, and then to the secretariat of the Cabinet, for eventual debate.
With the caretaker government of Saad Hariri unable to formally endorse draft laws, several ministers have spent recent weeks “clearing their desks” of pending work, such as authoring draft legislation, which may or may not be adopted by their successors.

The draft leaves intact the 48-hour work-week, calculated at eight hours a day, for six days a week, but stipulates for the first time maximum overtime hours, as well as compensation for overtime during the week.
Harb said unlike the existing legislation, which dates from 1946, the new draft labor law was in line with all of the regional and international labor-related treaties and convention that Lebanon has endorsed in recent years.
It also incorporates recommendations by the Arab Labor Organization and International Labor Organization, although Beirut has yet to formally ratify these recommendations.

The minister said the draft ends discrimination between men and women, and introduces for the first time statutes related to workplace inspection of commercial and industrial establishments. It also introduces the notion of part-time work, which is absent in the existing law.

Harb said the draft law also incorporates judgments handed down by labor arbitration boards, and seeks to clear up problems of interpretation by introducing clear definitions of labor-related concepts.
The draft raises the period of maternity leave from seven to ten weeks and allows nursing mothers an hour per day to breast-feed their infants.

“For the first time, the following types of leave have been added: marriage, paternity and bereavement up to the fourth degree of kinship, while [the draft] links annual leave to seniority, so that paid vacation increases with years of service,” Harb said.

Harb said that upon becoming minister in 2009, he discovered an already-completed draft labor law contained “a number of loopholes,” which required that the legislation be revamped.
Harb pledged to follow up the draft law as an MP if he is not a member of the new government, whose formation is now under way.

“After all, I’m a deputy in Parliament, and even if I weren’t, as a Lebanese citizen I would ask my deputy to do so, otherwise I shouldn’t be in government.” – The Daily Star