Trade Unions Notes on Draft-Amendments to the Labor Code

Salome Chkheidze

Georgian Confederation of Trade Unions presented notes and recommendations on draft- amendments to the Labor Code for nongovernmental organizations.

Chairman of the Confederation Irakli Petriashvili said they have reached some agreements with regard to drafted amendments to the Labor Code with the Ministry of Justice but there are some issues, on which they still disagree.

“The Labor Code does not contain mechanisms for the prevention of discrimination; employee is not safe to be sacked from work on discriminative grounds. Standard working time and reimbursement of extra working hours are not estimated. Besides, the Code does envisage compensation for unused vacation, restoration of the dismissed person to his/her working place and some other issues which are very significant in the opinion of the Confederation of Trade Unions,” said Irakli Petriashvili and added that length of working hours shall be no more than 41 hours and extra working hours shall be reimbursed by increased tariff.

Representatives of the Trade Unions state maximum working hours for the people between 16 and 18 and people working in hard or dangerous conditions shall be 36 hours. Besides that Chapter 5 shall also be amended and the part, which claims that employer is not obliged to clarify the reason of firing an employee, shall be completely removed from the law. Chapter 6 shall also be amended and labor contracts shall be formed in written form if labor cooperation lasts more than 2 months. Confederation of Trade Unions believes that when suspending labor contracts, the employer shall reimburse unused vacation for the employee.

The Confederation also requests to add one more day-off to the calendar. They think government shall declare either 1 May or 7 October to be the Labor Day.

Representatives of the Confederation of Trade Unions and lawyers of nongovernmental organizations held discussion about notes and recommendations on the draft-amendments to the Labor Code.