The Public Defender of Georgia submitted her opinion about the legislative amendments to the labour law (N07-3/448/9, 27.04.2020) to the Parliament of Georgia on July 2, 2020.

The Public Defender supports the bill and notes that the proposed changes are aimed at correcting the shortcomings in the labour legislation and improving the rights situation of employees. At the same time, it is important for the Parliament of Georgia not to delay the discussion of the bill and to support the proposed changes in a timely manner. According to the Public Defender, the bill should not include the changes that would worsen the standards of protection of labour rights reflected in the presented version.

At the same time, the Public Defender criticizes the fact that according to the bill, the Labour Inspectorate shall be given a mandate to examine the cases of discrimination without reservation, and offered the Parliament of Georgia to edit the bill so that to rule out the duplication of the mandate of the Public Defender as an equality body.

"The only process that we see in terms of simultaneous work of the Public Defender's Office and the Labour Inspectorate is the mandate of the latter to assess the general policy on equality in the workplace and to refer a case to the Public Defender if it detects an individual case of alleged discrimination," the Public Defender said.

The model proposed by the amendments duplicates the powers of the bodies examining the cases of discrimination, which in turn creates a risk of setting conflicting national standards for equality. In addition, creating an additional mechanism on the same issue will lead to unjustified spending of human and financial resources.