M. van Klaveren, K.G. Tijdens, M. Hughie-Williams and N.E. Ramos Martin
• Any of the parents or another member of the family looking after the children has the right for partly
paid leave until children reach the age of three years; during this leave the person looking after the
children shall get allowances equal to twice the minimum wage until each child reaches the age of one
year and a half, and equal to a minimum wage in the period from that age to that of three years (Act
on Leaves of 19 July 1994).
2.4.2. Labour relations and wage-setting
According to the US Dept of State (2010) the ATUC, affiliated to the ITUC, in 2009 had approximately
1.6 million members representing 28 union federations in various industrial sectors. However, the ITUC
2009 affiliates list (ITUC website) mentions for ATUC a membership of 735,000. Taking the size of the
labour force in paid employment for 2009 (an estimated 1,750,000) as a starting point, union density in Az-
erbaijan may vary between 42 and 91%.
The national process of wage-setting seems to be orchestrated top-down, but one will see that some
reservations may make sense. Traditionally, each year the General Collective Agreement is signed by the
Cabinet Ministers, the ATUC and, on behalf of the employers, the Azerbaijan Confederation of Entre-
preneurs (ACE). Mostly the ATUC executive discuses the union input in October, while the draft agree-
ment is published in November and mostly also concluded. However, the most recent General Collective
Agreement was not concluded before February 4, 2010. A considerable part of its text contains rather ritual
wording. Interesting in view of the minimum wage is the commitment to “work over step-by-step bringing
the population’s income to the requirements, established by the renewed European Social Charter, and ap-
proach in a staged manner minimum wages, based partly on pensions and the need criterion concerning the
cost of living”. The agreement also contains obligations for employers on, inter alia, the creation of sanitary
conditions for the preservation of the general and reproductive health of women. Finally, it was agreed
that 0.15% of the wage fund of enterprises and organisations having signed branch and regional collective
agreements should be transferred as membership fee to the trade unions (website ABC, various messages).
According to a respected Azerbaijani news source the last agreement contained “strange macroeconomic
operations of the parties”, as the Cabinet informed that in compliance with the agreement the parties were
to work on a reduction in 2011 of the country’s GDP, industrial output and cash income of the population
by some %points (NN 2010a). In contrast with this top-down “operations”, it does not seem that easy for
the unions to get collective agreements off the ground. In this respect the ATUC closely cooperates with
the Labour Inspectorate, and obviously not without success: in the first half year of 2009 they succeeded to
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