Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

HCAV has many times addressed the legality of dismissing employees based on reaching the pension age. There are many cases of dismissing employees based on the condition of reaching the pension age. A.D.’s dismissal is one of those cases.

On 17 August 2021, with HCAV’s support, citizen A.D. applied to Court and asked to recognize invalid his employer’s order to dismiss him, reinstate him in his post, and in case it is impossible to restore employment relations, to oblige the employer to provide compensation for the whole period of idleness and for not reinstating his post by paying twelve times the average salary.

There was no condition of dismissal based on reaching the pension age in A. D.’s employment contract. It turns out that the employer terminated the employment contract by violating the established procedure, since the existence of a valid reason is compulsory for terminating an employment contract with a person with the right to pension. This means that when signing an employment contract, the parties should provide for early termination of the contract after reaching the age of 63. Otherwise, dismissing an employee based on clause 11 of part 1 of Article 113 of the RA Labor Code is illegal.   

HCAV advocate Hayk Hakobyan was the representative of A.D.’s rights and legal interests in court. The advocate drew the court’s attention to the condition that Article 24 of the Revised European Social Charter provides for an opportunity to terminate employment relations only in case of two groups of reasons  connected with their capacity or conduct of the employee or based on the operational requirements of the establishment (economic reasons).

On 14 July 2022, the court made a judgment and recognized the violation of A.D.’s rights and obliged the employer to pay compensation for the enforced idleness in the amount of the average salary starting from the day of dismissal until the entry into legal force of the judgment, as well as compensation for not reinstating the employee in the amount of three times the average salary. 

If your labor rights have been violated or you have questions, call 041 123302 or write to Decent Work Now.