Amendments proposed to Labour Code

In September 2004, a parliamentary working group proposed a number of amendments to Lithuania's Labour Code, which came into force as recently as January 2003. The social partners have discussed the proposals in detail, agreeing on some, but not others.

The Labour Code of the Republic of Lithuania (Lietuvos Respublikos Darbo Kodeksas, DK) was finally adopted on 4 June 2002, following a decade of drafting and debate, and came into effect from 1 January 2003. Before the Labour Code came into force, employment relations were governed by numerous laws (such as the Laws on the Employment Contract, Wages, Holidays, and Collective Agreements and Contracts) and secondary legislation. The Code's implementation materially changed the legal governance of employment relations. It particularly emphasises the facilitation and development of social dialogue: a number of issues that had been strictly governed by legislation (or rather the state) were transferred to the field regulated by collective bargaining, thus encouraging the social partners to enter into collective agreements, not only at company level, but also at sectoral, regional or national levels. Among the most significant innovations was that the Code not only enshrines for the first time a concept of social partnership, along with its basic principles, parties, levels, forms and system, but also explicitly defines the right of employees to information and consultation as well as, for example, reforming employee representation and the termination of employment relationships.

It was not expected that the Labour Code would be amended for a prolonged period of time, in order to allow greater stability in the regulation of employment relations. However, within one year of coming into force, more than 300 proposals were made to amend more than a third of the Code's articles. Apart from various technical proposals that are regarded as necessary to improve the efficiency of regulation, there are numerous proposals on the part of employers to make material amendments to some of the Code's provisions so as to reduce social, economic and employment guarantees currently afforded to employees.

In order to select the most important and essential of the proposed amendments to the Labour Code, a parliamentary working group was set up. In September 2004, a draft Law on amendment of the Labour Code was finalised and forwarded for rapid consideration by the Tripartite Council of the Republic of Lithuania (Lietuvos Respublikos Trišalė taryba, LRTT). This resulted in relatively critical discussions among the social partners. Though most of the proposed amendments seek to liberalise employment relation, the draft law based on the recommendations of the working group seeks to reflect the interests of both employers and employees.

Some technical amendments (concerning harmonisation of definitions, attunement with other legislation etc) were unanimously agreed by the social partners, but much debate was provoked by proposed amendments on issues such as early termination of fixed-term employment contracts, guarantees to the trade union officials, calculation of length of service, or additional annual leave. The social partners have not come to any agreement on these issues. After long discussions, the social partners did manage to agree on some issues, such as matters related to employee information and consultation, the procedure for dismissing employees who have been on sick leave for prolonged periods of time, severance pay for employees dismissed due to liquidation of the employer, and the maximum length of overtime.

The final decision on the draft amendments to the Labour Code should be taken by parliament.