GYLA responds to the International Workers’ Day

1 May is an important day, which emphasizes symbolically the significance of employer’s work and necessity of decent work conditions.

The ultimate realization of the freedom of labor by a human being stipulates social wellbeing of a particular person or a country but despite the recent positive legislative amendments made in Georgia the necessity of adequate protection of labor freedom is not still properly considered on the policy level.

First of all, it is noteworthy that the state of people employed in jobs with dangerous conditions, which stand daily in front of physical damage or death. Despite the creation of a labor inspection mechanism, the number of people injured with industrial trauma increases significantly. Postponement of enactment of the law which enhances the inspection mandate and allows it to examine any place of employment without prior permission of the court shows the state's failure to address this problem. It is also problematic that the inspection mandate does not apply to all types of labor rights and only concerns the safety element. Institutional independence of labor inspection and its strengthening with human and financial resources is also necessary.  

Beyond legislative regulations, competent state agencies do not advocate properly the protection of necessity for the safety rules with private employers and in some cases, indirectly encourage the opposite action that is expressed in the ineffective investigation of the majority of fatal cases resulting from labor safety conditions.

It is also symptomatic recent incidents of going on strikes by representatives of various professions when the most vulnerable groups have decided to talk about hard working conditions.  The cases concerns organizations managed by shares of private and state owners as well as state agencies. Among them were social workers, metro train drivers, employees of a mill in Gori and employees of the electric locomotive plant. Strikers demanded to increase in salary, to give an unpaid salary, to improve working conditions, to ensure the work compliance with the human resources and so on. At the same, time the facts of restriction of labor rights of public employees due to the political opinions, including the dismissal reveals periodically, which appear to be prevalent in pre-election periods.

The issue of women's economic strengthening and their becoming as perfect members of the united labor market is problematic. Today many women perform domestic or other kinds of work that are beyond the state economy, and therefore will not be shown as accumulated capital by a woman. In addition, facts of sexual harassment against women in professional relationships have been revealed recently, which further hinders the active realization of women's rights.

The problem of employment LGBT + community members, especially transgender people has attracted a lot of criticism because finding a decent job is especially problematic for them.

The quality of implementation of labor rights by persons with disabilities is very low. One of the major impediments of their employment is the improperly arranged physical environment. The form of discrimination - refusal to reasonable adaptation, which implies the obligation to arrange a place of work according to his needs is still not taken into consideration by the Georgian legislation.

The guarantee of labor rights in the frame of protection of human rights in Georgia becomes one of the major challenges. The absence of uniform labor policy at the state level and the failure of the state to guarantee labor rights has a negative effect on the social protection and stability of the ordinary employee, which, in turn, is harmful to the state welfare.