Joined TRO and ended up without a job due to no-shows. How residents of Ukraine protect their labor rights during hostilities

Stories of citizens whose cases reached the Supreme Court in the fight for their own rights.

The high level of unemployment and changes in labor legislation, provoked by the war, gave Ukrainian employers a free hand, allowing them not to be held accountable for late payment, dismissal of an employee on sick leave, deterioration of working conditions and reduction of pay without two months’ notice.

However, many workers continue to successfully defend their rights. “Glavkom” tells the real stories of citizens who took their labor disputes to the Supreme Court and won. Some of the cases that will be discussed further date back to 2017, some were opened during the full-scale invasion and are directly related to the realities of a full-scale war.

To better illustrate the challenges that workers face today, here are a few new labor laws passed at the start of the full-scale war.
Law 2136-IX “On the organization of labor relations during martial law” gave employers the opportunity to suspend the employment contract on their own initiative; in rare cases, not be responsible for late payment of labor; dismiss an employee while on sick leave, vacation, etc.

Law 2352-IX allowed working conditions and pay to be changed for the worse no later than before the introduction of these conditions. Previously, employees had to be warned about this after two months.

Doctor Kotika's salary

But even despite the “draconian” changes in labor legislation, plaintiffs can defend their rights in court and do so very successfully. One such example is the story of a doctor, orthopedist-traumatologist Sergei Kotik from Vinnitsa. He worked in the emergency trauma department of the Vinnytsia Regional Children's Clinical Hospital.

In the summer of 2022, that is, already during a full-scale war, the administration of the medical institution began to fire staff. This also affected Sergei, who worked in a part-time position.

“The manager called me on the phone and told me to write a statement of my own free will, otherwise they wouldn’t give me a payment and they wouldn’t take me to any hospital again. I said that I would not write anything. After that, the manager called back several more times and said that he had spoken with the accounting department and they confirmed that they would not give any money. This attitude extremely outraged me,” Sergei Kotik told Glavkom.

Instead of Sergei Kotik, who worked part-time, the hospital administration wanted to hire a trainee doctor, less experienced, but full-time.

Kitty decided to defend his rights in court. Other employees, he says, obediently wrote letters of resignation.

As Vitaly Dudin, candidate of legal sciences, activist of the public organization “Social Movement”, who helped Sergei Kotik with the claim, explained to the Commander-in-Chief, the Labor Code at the time of the doctor’s dismissal did not contain provisions on dismissal from a part-time job in connection with the hiring of an employee for this job , who is not a part-time worker.

“There remains such an “atavistic” basis for dismissal at the level of the 1993 by-law. The dismissal process looked extremely hasty, because the issued dismissal order did not contain any reference to any regulatory grounds, so the administration had to subsequently supplement it,” said the Glavkom lawyer.

The doctor himself claims that what made him go to court was not so much the desire to be reinstated in his position (although he loved this hospital and came to work there as an intern), but rather the conviction that he must restore justice. After all, the management acted boorishly and clearly disregarded the requirements of the law.

The Vinnytsia City Court sided with the doctor, then he lost the appeal and filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court. In November, the court ruled that the plaintiff was right and upheld the decision of the first instance. The Supreme Court noted that there were no grounds to dismiss the part-time worker on the basis of the by-laws.

As Sergei Kotik told “Glavkom”, on November 28, the hospital told him that they wanted to get a court decision, which they had not yet seen. After this, the doctor must be reinstated and compensated for forced absences.

Anti-corruption official fired twice

In March last year, the administration of the Volynstandartmetrology State Enterprise suspended the employment contract with the state enterprise’s anti-corruption activities commissioner, Konstantin Pantic, citing a worsening financial situation.

According to Konstantin Pantic himself, his removal from work gave the management an opportunity to get rid of anti-corruption supervision. He also claims that the employment contracts of a number of other employees were terminated, while management continued to receive high bonuses.

All this, says Pantik, prompted him to appeal to the Lutsk city district court, where he won his case. However, the Volyn Court of Appeal took the employer’s side. According to Pantic, this happened because he and his lawyer could not be present in court when making the decision, which they reported in advance in their petition, which the court for some reason did not accept for consideration.

While Konstantin was seeking the truth in court, the employer suddenly renewed his employment contract with him, but transferred him to part-time work. Konstantin categorically disagreed with this. The rightness of the employee was also confirmed by representatives of the Ministry of Economy, who, after checking with the relevant act, demanded that Pantik be reinstated to full time. But instead, Pantic was fired a second time - allegedly for systematic failure to fulfill the duties assigned to him by the employment contract. The employee was required to submit reports on the implementation of anti-corruption programs at the enterprise, in particular, for 2022, when Konstantin Pantic did not work because his employment contract was terminated for seven months. And his written requests to provide information for verification, he said, were ignored by management.

Konstantin Pantic was sued for invalidating the order to suspend his employment contract from April to December 2022, and for illegal dismissal in March 2023. In the end, he won the lawsuit regarding the illegality of dismissal. Currently, Pantic hopes that the Supreme Court will invalidate the order to temporarily terminate his employment contract and oblige the employer to pay 125 thousand UAH for the period of forced absence, as well as 10 thousand UAH of moral compensation.

The watchman punished the manager for rudeness

73-year-old Vyacheslav Podolchuk from the town of Zastavna, Chernivtsi region, worked for many years as an artist at the local Higher Vocational School No. 24, and in recent years he held the position of a watchman there, from which, as the court found, he was illegally fired. Podolchuk went to court and finally forced the employer to reinstate him at work and pay 47 thousand UAH in compensation for forced absences.

This story began with the fact that the head of the school was changed. The new director, according to Vyacheslav Podolchuk, began to reproach him without evidence for dereliction of duty. And finally he signed the dismissal order. This happened after someone broke the windows in the director's office. Podolchuk claims that the windows were not damaged during his shift, and when he began his duties, he did not notice any damage to property. According to him, cases of vandalism at the school occur frequently and he has repeatedly had to catch young people red-handed who picked flowers in flower beds or threw pebbles at the windows of female students living in a dormitory next to the academic building. Podolchuk wrote written explanations about all events. However, it was the last incident with the windows that became the reason for his dismissal.

The director, according to Podolchuk, communicated with him in a boorish manner and poked the 74-year-old watchman. So the man decided to sue. Lawyer Galina Bozhescu, who represented the interests of Vyacheslav Podolchuk in 2020, told Glavkom that, having lost the first instance, her client lost heart.

“Not long before this, Mr. Vyacheslav buried his wife. It was felt that he was in a dejected state. However, the court of appeal sided with us,” the defender said. The defendant filed a cassation appeal, but the Supreme Court dismissed it.

Vyacheslav Podolchuk told “Glavkom” that after the court’s decision he was resumed at work and was paid everything due. After that, he resigned of his own free will.

“If you are an honest person, and they are rude to your face, they blame you, this causes indignation. Who are you to do this? Therefore, the desire to defend justice became the incentive that gave me the strength to fight,” summed up the pensioner.

On the right, through the photo in a swimsuit, the sixth year stretches

In the context of the fight for labor rights, it is difficult to ignore the story of kindergarten teacher Vita Chereshnevskaya from the Rivne region. She fought for six years to be reinstated. In the end, the Supreme Court decided to recover 111 thousand UAH from the employer.

Let's remember this epic story. In 2017, Chereshnevskaya posted a photo in a swimsuit on Instagram. The director of the kindergarten “Divosvit” in the Radivilovsky district, having seen this publication, fired the teacher... “for immoral behavior.”

Social networks then took the side of the fired teacher. Even ex-Minister of Education Liliya Grinevich commented on the scandal and called the dismissal “retribution.”

In the end, Chereshnevskaya was reinstated in her position, but was soon fired for absenteeism. She went to court again and won the case again in March of this year.

However, the story is not over yet. The management of the kindergarten filed a cassation, which is now being considered by the Supreme Court.

Went to defend Ukraine - fired for absenteeism

A resident of the Khmelnytsky region worked as an electrician in a private company and on the very first day of the full-scale invasion he joined the ranks of the terrorist defense of the city of Starokonstantinov, Khmelnytsky region, informing his employer Energo Line LLC about this four days later. However, on April 8, the employer fired the electrician for absenteeism, according to a statement from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. The husband appealed this decision and won in the first instance. According to the Starokonstantinovsky District Court, the plaintiff was absent from work for reasons beyond his control, due to the conduct of hostilities and related circumstances, as a result of which he was forced to take measures to protect himself, his family and the state.

The defendant lost the appeal and cassation, so the illegally dismissed employee was reinstated and he was also paid 60 thousand UAH. for forced absences and even 2 thousand UAH of moral compensation. Now the man serves in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Time forces people to understand their rights”

The above examples indicate that, despite the obvious advantages of employers who have funds for lawyers, ordinary citizens can still achieve justice in protecting their labor rights. In addition, by defending their right to work, citizens indirectly defend public interests, since their successful experience can inspire others.

At the same time, it should be recognized that citizens do not often dare to defend their labor rights in Ukrainian courts. Moreover, in Ukraine, the trade union movement and collective defense of the interests of workers are poorly developed, unlike the United States or European Union countries. However, if the members of the association are motivated, they can achieve their goal. There are cases where in territorial communities trade unions managed to save a hospital from closure and protect staff from dismissal. This happened, in particular, in Sosnovka, Lviv region.

Back in 2019, the local hospital was on the verge of closure due to underfunding. Dozens of medical workers were laid off. Not wanting to put up with the situation, doctors created a trade union and went to court. At the same time, protests were organized.

Ultimately, in the fall of 2022, a new leader appeared at the hospital, who managed to find a common language with both the staff and local authorities. Currently, the hospital is operational and equipped with modern equipment.

According to the leader of the public movement for protecting the rights of medical workers “Be like Nina” Oksana Slobodyan, Ukrainians have become more active in defending their labor rights.

“There is no longer that fear (of the employer - Glavkom) as there was several years ago,” she shared with Glavkom.

Ukrainians, according to Oksana Slobodyan, in recent years have begun to more closely monitor the expenditure of budget funds and try to influence unlawful decisions through protests and litigation. If a few years ago she had to call on medical workers to come out and defend their rights, today she even has to limit the number of participants due to the ban on mass gatherings, the human rights activist adds.

Unable to use such forms of rights protection as protests or boycotts under martial law, some trade unions are now considering the option of a more effective fight in the courts with the involvement of a team of lawyers. The head of the cell of the Free Trade Union of Railway Workers of Ukraine in the Darnitsa depot in Kyiv, Alexander Skiba, told the “Glavkom” about the project to create an operational group of lawyers who would protect the interests of trade union members throughout the country.

According to the plan, this should be a professional team of several people. They can not only go on business trips and share experiences with trade union members, but also monitor legislative initiatives that in the future may threaten the socio-economic and labor rights of hired workers. However, all this is still at the development stage.