Protection of labour rights by trade unions in separate post-soviet countries

This analysis shows that the national legislators were not fully following the international standards established by the International Labour Organization and did not fully secure the freedom of association. All the mentioned countries were recommended either to change some pieces of legislation or to supervise the existing draft of laws to make them meet the rules set in a number of international conventions.

Conclusions

labour right international convention

Trade unions form an important element in every civil society, because one of their main functions is the protection of labour rights with the aim to establish a fair balance between employers and employees. A number of legal guarantees to ensure a smooth fulfilment of the protective function of the trade unions is foreseen by international legal instruments: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention (No. 87) Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention No. 87. (1948, June). Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/ dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312232., Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention (No. 98) (hereinafter - Convention No. 98) Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention No. 98. (1949, June). Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/ en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:55:0::NO::P55_TYPE,P55_LANG,P55_DOCUMENT,P55_NODE:CON,en,C098,%2FDocument., Workers' Representatives Convention (No. 135) Workers' Representatives Convention No. 135. (1971, June). Retrieved from https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:12100:::NO:1 2100:P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312280., International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (1966, December). Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/ professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx. and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. (1966, December). Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/ pages/ccpr.aspx.. The international standards, set forth by these conventions, are not always directly implemented in the legislation of post-Soviet Countries, despite the fact that trade unions' activities are directly or indirectly mentioned in the Constitutions of the mentioned countries.

Some of the post-Soviet states are now members of the EU (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and are subject to regional EU regulations. The EU legislator provides special additional representational instruments of the rights of employees, which duplicate the functions of trade unions - such as European work councils. However, these instruments are only used in big transnational corporations and aren't popular in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Every post-Soviet State has its own jurisprudence, legal practice and traditions of labour rights' protection and hence has its own national peculiarities with regard to this protection, the representation of employees and the architecture of labour legislation. All of this should be taken into account when implementing or unifying international or European labour legislation. When studying the cases heard by the Committee on Freedom of Association, established by the International Labour Organization, one notices that in post-Soviet countries there had been a number of norms, provided by national laws, which were not meeting the international standards. Moreover, as the international independent reports show, trade unions in post-Soviet countries are not always effective, despite the fact that national legislation duly meets the standard of international practices. Notwithstanding mistakes of certain trade unions, the efficiency and popularity of the traditional model of labour rights' protection by labour unions is still insufficient in post-Soviet countries. These models need revision and renovation of the legal framework, which will allow the rebooting of the protective mechanism of the trade unions, aligned with the modern needs of post-Soviet societies.

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