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Labor Code of Georgia-Employees Are Fired Over One Lost Khachapuri

July 19, 2008
Nona Suvariani, Tbilisi

The rights of the employees are breached in Georgia. There are no laws protecting them. The report of Georgian Trade in the first half of 2008

The report discusses those reasons which complicated the situation in Georgia. One of the reasons as the Trade Union assessed is the lack and insufficiency of dialogues between Georgian government and the overall population. The situation has resulted from the discriminative feature of the Labor Code. “Current Labor Code made it almost impossible to protect the employment rights of the employees and it does not realize the minimal standards afforded by international conventions,” stated Irakli Petriashvili, the chairperson of the Trade Union.

The employers try to neglect the rights that superficially envisaged in the Labor Code by short term contracts. Moreover, such contracts are excellent tools for controlling people employed in various governmental agencies. High-ranking officials have oppressed Trade Unions more often in recent times.

Despite extremely difficult social conditions in the country, the financing of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Welfare was reduced by 30 million GEL.

The report of the Trade Union dealt with the reform in the healthcare system.

“The Plan of Hospital Sector Development” that was worked out in January of 2007 is being implemented in secret and without the participation of doctors.”

The reform turned into ruthless violation of labor rights of medical personnel that was demonstrated by inadequate optimization of hospitals and reductions of doctors; reasonable damaging of hospital infrastructure and expelling medical personnel from the hospital buildings.”

Nevertheless, the urgent situation is not only in medical sector but very often people are fired on political grounds from various offices. The report reveals several concrete facts of that provide the background to such violations.

On March 6 2008 Ekaterine Nebieridze brought suit to the Civil Case Bureau of the Tbilisi City Court against the Georgian Post where she demanded to re-appoint to her old position in the post and reimburse the salaries for the missed months. The employment contract was not prolonged with Ekaterine Nebieridze because of her political opinions. In terms of the Georgian Snap Presidential Elections on January 5 2008 Nebieridze was a commission member from the Republic Party at one of the precincts. This fact became the main ground for dismissal from her job. She was the only person out of 134 employees whose employment contracts were not prolonged.


On April 2 2008 Eter Beriashvili, Khatuna Gurchiani and Eka Kuchaveli appealed to the Civil Case Bureau of the Tbilisi City Court against “Megamarket” and requested compensation and reimbursement of the salaries for the months they worked as well as salaries for unused holidays. On March 24 2008 they were fired for one Khachapuri that was lost in the market. Later the Khachapuri was discovered in the lift pit (the workers dropped it when they were carrying Khachapuris from bakery to the shop). “The court has not started discussion of the case yet. Nonetheless, the Trade Union claims that the “defendant falsifies the employment agreements within the requirements of the current Labor Code and acts illegally.”

International organizations negatively assess the current labor conditions in Georgia. The Expert Committee of the International Labor Organization demanded the Georgian authority to comply with the recommendations, to introduce amendments to the Labor Code and to inform the committee about any measures taken in the sphere of labor regulations.

The Trade Union intends to work out legislative initiative in order to improve the code; they want to provide employees with legal service; to carry out social-economic survey, to increase their activities on international level and in the case of necessity they also intend to hold large-scale manifestations and strikes.

Salome Vardiashvili, representative of the Public Defender’s Office: “The number of complaints of those persons who have been illegally fired from their jobs is enormous. Thus, this problem will be one of the priorities in the next report of the Georgian Public Defender. Although, the Ombudsman always paid attention to this problem currently the issue is extremely urgent and requires more attention. The Labor Code is discriminative and degrading. The articles 37 and 38 must be immediately altered which are used as basis for firing people. We are also demanding to define the grounds for these reductions that will enable the interested person or the court to observe how legally this or that person was fired.”

The Trade Union publishes its reports twice a year. Local and international organizations attended the presentation of the most recent report.


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