Article 19

In the case of a periodical payment to which this Article applies, the rate of the benefit, increased by the amount of any family allowances payable during the contingency, shall be such as to attain, in respect of the contingency in question, for the standard beneficiary indicated in Schedule II to this Convention, at least the percentage indicated therein of the total of the previous earnings of the beneficiary or his breadwinner and of the amount of any family allowances payable to a person protected with the same family responsibilities as the standard beneficiary.

The previous earnings of the beneficiary or his breadwinner shall be calculated according to prescribed rules, and, where the persons protected or their breadwinners are arranged in classes according to their earnings, their previous earnings may be calculated from the basic earnings of the classes to which they belonged.

A maximum limit may be prescribed for the rate of the benefit or for the earnings taken into account for the calculation of the benefit, provided that the maximum limit is fixed in such a way that the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article are complied with where the previous earnings of the beneficiary or his breadwinner are equal to or lower than the wage of a skilled manual male employee.

The previous earnings of the beneficiary or his breadwinner, the wage of the skilled manual male employee, the benefit and any family allowances shall be calculated on the same time basis.

For the other beneficiaries the benefit shall bear a reasonable relation to the benefit for the standard beneficiary.

For the purpose of this Article, a skilled manual male employee shall be

The person deemed typical of skilled labour for the purpose of clause (b) of the preceding paragraph shall be a person employed in the major group of economic activities with the largest number of economically active male persons protected in the contingency in question, or of the breadwinners of the persons protected, as the case may be, in the division comprising the largest number of such persons or breadwinners; for this purpose, the international standard industrial classification of all economic activities, adopted by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations at its Seventh Session on 27 August 1948, as amended and reproduced in the Annex to this Convention, or such classification as at any time further amended, shall be used.

Where the rate of benefit varies by region, the skilled manual male employee may be determined for each region in accordance with paragraphs 6 and 7 of this Article.

The wage of the skilled manual male employee shall be determined on the basis of the rates of wages for normal hours of work fixed by collective agreements, by or in pursuance of national laws or regulations, where applicable, or by custom, including cost-of-living allowances, if any; where such rates differ by region but paragraph 8 of this Article is not applied, the median rate shall be taken.

No periodical payment shall be less than a prescribed minimum amount.