Labour Inspection. Changes You Need to Know About

Iryna Shlyakhovska, senior associate at Legal Alliance Company

The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine by Resolution No. 295 of April 26th, 2017 approved the Procedure for Exercising State Control over Compliance with Labour Legislation, which came into effect on May 16th, 2017.

From now on, state control over observance of labour legislation will be exercised in the form of inspection visits and in-service inspections by inspectors of the State Service of Ukraine for Labour not only of its territorial bodies, but also of the executive bodies of city councils of cities of regional significance and village, town and city councils of joint territorial communities (on issues of timely and full payment for work, compliance with the minimum wage guarantees, registration of labour relations).

Pursuant to para 14(2) of the Procedure, if an inspection visit takes place, an enterprise has the right not to allow it in the event inspectors do not have a service certificate. Here it is worth paying attention to the fact that a certificate on which there is no information in the register of certificates of labour inspectors is considered invalid. Also, a sufficient reason to prevent inspectors from entering the enterprise is the absence on the official website of the State Service for Labour of a decision of the Ministry of Social Policy about forms of the service certificate of a labour inspector, a statement, a certificate, order, requirements and the list of issues to be inspected. In addition, the inspection may not take place if the inspection visit is longer than 10 working days, and for micro proprietorship and small business - 2 working days.

The Procedure (para 13) also contains a number of important provisions by which labour inspectors are prohibited from:

1) acting as mediators, arbitrators or experts when examining individual or collective labour disputes;

2) working for the employees of the object of visit during the calculation or recalculation of the amount of funds due to employees, preparing conclusions on compliance or non-compliance of regulatory enactments of the object of visit with the regulatory acts to transfer them to employees (including the dismissed ones), other persons or bodies;

3) conducting inspections in order to obtain any documents or their copies for subsequent transfer to other persons;

4) examining and verifying the issue that is the subject of consideration in court, or in relation to which there is an effective court decision; verifying the timeliness, correctness and completeness of court decisions enforcement;

5) disclosing industrial and commercial secrets or production processes which they could learn during the performance of their duties, except in cases stipulated by law, including within three years after dismissal;

6) disclosing a source of any complaint about defects or violations and notifying the object of the visit or its representative that an inspection was carried due to such a complaint;

7) withdrawing from the objects of the visit the originals of their financial and economic, accounting and other documents, as well as computers and parts thereof.