Ukrainian unions are concerned over at least seven anti-worker and anti-union draft laws in violation of the national constitution and international labour standards, including ILO conventions and EU directives.
This follows last year’s mass protests against attempts by the government to reform Ukraine’s labour laws and introduce such laws in a manner that critics argued was not consistent with international labour standards. Instead of a single labour law reform, the government has instead introduced a number of separate laws which unions say give more powers to employers and strip back worker rights. Draft law no. 5371, submitted to the parliament on 13 April, proposes a new «contractual regime for regulating labour relations» for small and medium-sized enterprises with less than 250 workers, with all working conditions determined by an employment contract instead of by labour law. This draft law threatens the majority of workers, since almost 75 per cent of employers employ less than 250 people, and 73.1 per cent of the economically active population work in small and medium-sized enterprises.
All norms and provisions that would normally be in the collective agreement would instead be set in the employment contract with each worker. For example, the employment contract would determine the grounds for dismissal instead of the current strict list of grounds provided by the labour code.
“Different employment contracts with workers that perform the same volume of work in the same working conditions can lead to discrimination if they receive different wages due to personal preferences and other subjective criteria of the employer,” says the chairman of the Trade Union of Metalworkers and Miners of Ukraine (PMGU), Alexander Ryabko.
