On 21 August, the Government approved the Procedure for exercising state control over the observance of labour law, adopting a resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine “Some Issues of State Supervision and Control over the Observance of Labour Law”, informs Association of Ukrainian Cities.

The Procedure stipulates that control over the observance of labour legislation is exercised by:

• State Labour Service of Ukraine and its territorial bodies;
• executive bodies of city councils of cities of oblast significance and rural, settlement, city councils

Hromadas regained the right to exercise control over the following issues:

• timely and complete remuneration;
• compliance with the minimum state guarantees in salary payments;
• registration of labour relations.

Inspections (inspection visits) may be carried out, in particular:

• at the request of the employee about violations of labour legislation in his/her regard;
• at the request of the natural person in respect of whom the rules of registration of labour relations have been violated;
• at the decision of the head of the control body on detection of unregistered labour relations, adopted on the basis of the analysis of information received from public sources and some other sources of state authorities, trade unions.

The Government's approval of the Procedure for exercising state control over the observance of labour law is related to the ruling of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv, which on 14 May 2019 declared the Cabinet of Ministers’ regulation as of 26 April 2017 No. 295 “On Some Issues of Implementation of Article 259 of the Labour Code of Ukraine and Article 34 of the Law of Ukraine “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” as invalid. This decision of the Court deprived local self-governments of the ability to exercise control in the field of labour.

We invite hromadas to familiarise with the methodological recommendations “Exercise control over compliance with labour legislation by local self-government bodies”, developed by the AUC (DOWNLOAD).

Background:

The work of local self-government bodies on labour control in 2018 showed positive results:

• In the third quarter of 2018, the working-age unemployment rate was only 8.3% (1.4 million citizens) and reached its lowest level since 2014 (9.7% in 2014). Compared to the third quarter of 2017, it decreased by 1%.
• Employment rate of working-age population in the third quarter of 2018 amounted to 67.3% (16 million citizens) and reached the highest level since 2014 (64.5% in 2014). Compared to the third quarter of 2017, it grew by 2.8%. Moreover, the employment rate equalled to the level of 2013 - 67.3%.