On November 1, 2024, the Public Defender of Georgia addressed the Evolution Georgia LLC with a general proposal regarding the prevention of discrimination and measures to be taken against it.

In order to assess the environment inciting discrimination in the workplace, the Public Defender’s Office started proceedings on its own initiative on July 8, 2024, based on publicly disseminated information. In addition, on July 9, 2024, the trade union Labour also applied to the Office with a request to study the mentioned issue.

As is known to the public, one of the employees of the company anonymously provided the Broadcaster with correspondence of the managers, which contained calls for physical violence, as well as humiliating, racist, sexist and mocking attitudes towards employees because of their appearance.

Based on the analysis of the requested and received materials from the Evolution Georgia LLC and the Labour Inspection Service, the Public Defender assessed the potential impact of alleged discriminatory practices on the quality of the working conditions of persons employed in the company and the factors inciting discrimination.

It is to be welcomed that the company has ended its legal relationship with all active employees involved in the publicly released correspondence, responsible for actions inciting discrimination. However, the content of the mentioned facts, especially the actions inciting discrimination carried out by persons in managerial positions, indicate that there are a number of problems in the direction of discriminatory environment in the company and the measures taken to protect employees from discrimination are insufficient.

In order to ensure the creation of a discrimination-free environment in the company and to strength the protection of the principle of equality, the Public Defender called on the Evolution Georgia LLC:

• before signing the employment contract, to inform the candidate not only of the legal provisions relating to the principle of equal treatment of persons, but also of the available rights protection mechanisms and legal consequences in case of violation of the principle of equality.
• to systematically retrain employees on issues of the principle of equality and fight against discrimination.
• to timely and effectively bring internal organizational acts and policies into compliance with the Law on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination.