Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

The RA Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has developed and put for public discussion the RA Draft Law “On making amendments and addenda to the RA Labor Code”.

In the frame of EU-funded “Decent Work Now”(in Armenian) project, Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor presented its recommendations and observations regarding the Draft Law.

HCAV has presented, inter alia, the following recommendations:

• Establish in part 1 of Article 3 of the Code that freedom of work is the main principle, and it includes free choice of employment, profession and type of activity, and freely disposing of working skills.
  
  
• Add “skin colour, sexual orientation” after “race” in point 3 of part 1 of Article 3 of the Code.
  
  
• Establish in the Code an opportunity of compensation for non-pecuniary damage in case of violation of the fundamental right to be free from discrimination.
  
  
• Remove 2nd and 3rd points from Article 11, which propose not to consider special working experience and insurance service record as a type of working experience.
  
  
• Review regulations established under Article 12 of the Draft and those concerning representatives of workers according to the Code, taking into account recommendations presented by ILO experts.
  
  
• Remove Article 16, which proposes to alter regulations of statute of limitations in the context of salary, which means that after adopting the proposed change, statute of limitations will also apply to the requirement of levying salary.
  
  
• Establish that the decision to strike shall be approved by the majority of workers who participate in the confidential voting, provided that at least half of the organization’s workforce participates in the voting, as well as reduce the periods of notifying as established under parts 2, 3 and 4 of Article 74 of the Code.
  
  
• Specify the legal term “nature of work or performance conditions” by exhaustively determining  the works which can be considered temporary due to their nature or performance conditions, as well as establish the exhaustive list of grounds which shall exclude signing a contract with a definite term. We also recommend restricting the maximum term or times of signing or resigning a definite term contract with one person.
  
  
• In part 1.1 of Article 49 of the draft, add “missing as a result of participating in hostilities” after the word “killed”, and add “missing as a result of participating in hostilities” after the word “killed” in point 1 of the same part.
  
  
• Review the provision established under point 11 of part 1 of Article 113 of the RA Labor Code in order to abolish the opportunity to terminate an employment contract exclusively based on reaching the pension age, as well as determine that setting forth requirements for violations of laws, normative legal acts or other collective contracts, we well as violations of other nature cannot be legal grounds for terminating an employment contract.
  
  
• Give the trade union or workers’ representatives the right to participate in the process of assessing the worker’s professional abilities and decision-making, which will allow for restricting the practice of employers making arbitrary and biased decisions.
  
  
• Clearly establish the period for an employee’s right to rest and eat in case of 12-hour working time.
  
  
• Establish the daily and weekly working time for children aged 12-14 in accordance with the requirements of the Charter.
  
  
• Establish definitions and essence of the terms “irregular work schedule”, “shift work”, “summarized calculation of working time”, “regimes of working time” in order to avoid violations of employees’ rights, and at the same time, specify the essential conditions, payment method and principles of providing rest and leave in the employment contracts signed with this group of persons.
  
  
• Envisage that the lack of an employer’s consent shall be manifested in writing form with substantiated and reasoned conditions. With respect to time restrictions, we propose not to establish any term in the contract and leave it up to  mutual agreement of the parties, i.e., the employer and the employee.
  
  
• Establish the opportunity for an employee to apply to court also in case of violations of their rights under international treaties, labor legislation, as well as collective contracts.
  
  

 Click here (in Armenian) to read the other recommendations and their substantiations.

This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.