Taboo subjects for employment: how changes in the Labor Code will affect the business, explained the lawyer "Skliarenko, Sydorenko and Partners"

It is expected that in the near future the parliament will consider the draft Law of August 29, 2019 No. 1148 “On Amending the Labor Code of Ukraine (regarding the protection of the rights of workers to personal and family life)”. The document proposes to expand the list of topics prohibited by the employer for discussion during an interview with a candidate for the job.

The consequences of introducing such an idea were clarified by the Segodnya publication together with the lawyer of attorneys at law Skliarenko, Sydorenko and Partners Tetiana Borysenko.

Recall now in accordance with Art. 25 of the Labor Code when concluding an employment contract, it is forbidden to require persons entering work to obtain information about their party and nationality, origin, registration of place of residence or stay.

The author of the legislative initiative proposes to add to this list any information and / or data on relations of a non-property and property nature, circumstances, events, relationships, etc. related to the person and members of his family. Exceptions will be cases requiring information regarding a person who plans to occupy a position related to the performance of the functions of the state or local authorities, official or official powers.

T. Borysenko believes that legislative changes, if approved by the parliament, will in fact not have a significant impact on labor relations. “In my practice, I have never met a justification for refusing to hire a job with facts of personal and family life,” the lawyer explained. “And it is very difficult to prove that it was precisely such circumstances that caused the refusal of employment.”

The expert recalled that Article 32 of the Constitution of Ukraine provides that no one may be subject to interference in personal and family life, except in cases provided for by the Constitution itself. Discrimination on various grounds is prohibited by the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Ukraine also has a law on the principles of preventing and combating discrimination, the scope of which extends to labor relations.

“Thus, the prohibition of discrimination on any grounds (race, color, political, religious and other beliefs, gender, age, disability, ethnic and social origin, citizenship, marital and property status, place of residence, linguistic or other grounds) and it is already provided for in the law. Therefore, the introduction of the changes proposed by the project No. 1148, in fact, will not change anything either for employers or for employees, ”T. Borysenko summed up.

On the other hand, the employer should be interested in the personal lives of employees, because the Labor Code provides certain guarantees for certain categories of employees, for example, for pregnant women, for single mothers with a child under the age of 14 or a child with a disability. For such women, a test for employment is not established (Article 26). Temporary transfer to another job of pregnant women, women with a child with a disability or a child under the age of six years, as well as persons under the age of eighteen years, is prohibited without the consent of such employees (Article 33). Some categories of women are given reduced working hours (art. 51) or part-time (art. 56). There is also a ban on involving them in overtime work (Art. 63) and robots at night (Art. 176).

“It turns out that the employer is not just possible, but actually need to be interested in certain aspects of the employee’s personal life when applying for a job,” said the lawyer. “But the list of such information should be limited to the amount of information that is necessary to prevent violations of labor guarantees.”

In general, according to the expert, in modern economic conditions, a person’s personal life rarely becomes an obstacle to employment, because the main criterion for hiring is the professional level of the candidate.