Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

"Maralik's case" continues to be examined in the court of general jurisdiction of Shirak region/Maralik's residence. Let's remind that in order to protect labor rights, J.A., A.H., and G.A., who worked at the "Kindergarten after Romi Baronyan" CNCO of Maralik, Ani community, Shirak region, applied to HCAV. 

The citizens who applied to the Organization were dismissed from work based on the expiration of the validity period of their employment contracts. However, in reality, the employer had shown a discriminatory attitude. In particular, unlike the other employees of the same institution, the employer had not extended the terms of the employment contracts signed for a certain period of time with the citizens who applied to our Organization and had terminated their contracts based on the expiration of the validity period of their contracts. The real reason for the termination of the contracts was the citizen’s position during the Maralik council of elders elections. The citizens dismissed from the jobs had publicly supported during the council of elders elections, not the winning candidate but his main rival. And, in fact, after the council of elders elections, when the candidate whom the mentioned citizens did not support was elected as the head of the Maralik community, they were dismissed from work. 

From a legal perspective, the employer was obliged to sign a contract, not an employment contract with a fixed term but an indefinite one, based on the grounds and procedures stipulated by the Labor Code. Instead of this, the employer had signed a fixed-term employment contract and had regularly extended the term of the employment contract. 

With the filed lawsuit to the General Jurisdiction Court of First Instance of Shirak region, HCAV claimed to recognize the employment contracts signed with the Plaintiffs as employment contracts signed indefinite, to invalidate the illegal regulations made by the director of the institution on the dismissal of the Applicants, to restore the Applicants to their previous work, and to pay for the entire period of forced downtime. The factual and legal grounds for showing a discriminatory attitude towards the Applicants by the employer due to their political position have also been submitted with the filed lawsuit. 

According to the decision of the Court, the submitted lawsuit was returned with the reason that “though the plaintiffs directed their claims against the same Employer, the claims of the plaintiffs are in no way correlated with each other. The fact that several employees of the institution were dismissed by a number of orders of the director of the institution on the same day is not a basis for considering the claims to invalidate the orders presented by those employees as interconnected. The court did not accept the lawsuit for proceedings based on this reasoning. 

As a result of the examination of the complaint submitted to the Appellate Court of RA, the court has annulled the return decision and has obliged the Court of the First Instance to accept the lawsuit filed by Plaintiffs for further proceedings. 

Within the scope of the case accepted for proceedings, the court has allocated the burden of proof. As part of this process, the director of the respondent institution was also interrogated in court at the request of the Plaintiffs. In particular, during the interrogation, it was important to reveal the fact that the employer had shown a discriminatory attitude towards the plaintiffs. According to the evaluation of the plaintiffs’ representative, the interrogation provided the necessary information, which proves the fact of discrimination. The court has retired to the deliberation room to make a decision.