The Public Defender of Georgia has addressed the Chairmen of the Parliament of Georgia and the the relevant committees with a proposal concerning the Law of Georgia on Labour Safety and the concomitant bill of amendments. The Public Defender considers that the initiated bill contains significant shortcomings, fails to provide an effective labour inspection mechanism or to ensure full protection of labour safety in the country.

In particular, according to the bill on labour safety, it applies only to hard, harmful and hazardous work, although safe and healthy working environment is the right of all employees. Therefore, it is important all employees to be provided with safe working environment and the law to be applied to all of them.

The main problem is that the controlling body will still not be able to enter and check enterprises without obstacles. It will be authorized to check enterprises only once a year, through selective control, and in other cases it will have the right to check the enterprises only on the basis of a judge's order. The Public Defender of Georgia believes that it is essentially important the controlling body to have the right to check all the enterprises without any preliminary consent or a judge's order.

It is welcome that the draft law envisages imposition of appropriate sanctions for violations, but the amount of fines is very small. According to the amendments, the first violation of labour safety rules leads to a warning, while the repeated violation of each condition specified by the Government's technical regulations, is punished by GEL 50.

At the same time, hindering the activities of the labour safety supervising body will initially result in a warning, while the repeated hindrance will be fined GEL 200. The Public Defender considers that the amount of the penalty must be adequate to the violation, in order to ensure prevention of the violation. Furthermore, it should be noted that imposition of a sanction (warning or fines) does not exempt a person from the obligation to eliminate the violation, as the main purpose of the law is to eliminate violations and to protect the employee.

It is problematic that the critical non-compliance with the labour safety norms is punished by a 500-GEL fine, with or without suspension of the right to operate. According to the draft law, critical non-compliance occurs when there is an obvious and substantial threat to life and/or health of the employee or the third person due to the lack of labour safety. Consequently, in case of such non-compliance, along with imposing a penalty, it is necessary to suspend the right to operate until the violation is eliminated and the latter sanction shall not be indicated as an alternative in the norm.

According to the legislative package, Article 42 concerning the violation of the labour legislation and labour protection rules shall be removed from the Code of Administrative Offenses of Georgia, while the explanatory note indicates that the abovementioned is conditioned by the purpose of avoiding duplication of norms. According to the Public Defender, this argument should not be taken into view during considering the abovementioned issue, as Article 42 is much broader than the proposed safety norms and concerns violations of not only safety, but other requirements of the legislation in the field of labour (such as, violations of the right to break or leave, remuneration for overtime work). At the same time, it applies to all employees and not only to those having hard, harmful and hazardous jobs.

The proposal submitted to the Parliament by the Public Defender also concerns other shortcomings in the bill.

The Public Defender urges the Parliament of Georgia to take into consideration the abovementioned opinions and expresses readiness to participate actively in the work process. Hopefully, the amendments made to the legislation will positively affect the situation of labour rights in the country, including the labour safety and protection of health and life of employees.