“Social Parasites” Obliged To Find Emnployment Fast By Themselves Since October 24

The labour legislation of Belarus has been amended today.

The new version of the Employment Law in Belarus comes into force on October 24 2016. The innovations concern employers, job seekers and employment offices, Interfax reports.

According to the information of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Belarus, the new version provides for the obligations of the unemployed. They are supposed to seek jobs by their own, come to the negotiations with the employers on the job issues within two working days since the date of issuance of a referral, come to the bodies of labour, employment and social protection to receive referrals to work or study.

Moreover, with an aim of stimulation of active job seeking, the law reinforces the responsibility of the unemployed for breaking the employment legislation. The maximum period of staying registered as unemployed has been shortened from 36 to 18 calendar months.

The new version of the law also clarifies the peculiarities of repeated registration as unemployed. Such citizens are provided the right to get help in obtaining experience of practical work in accordance with their profession or specialty. This also concerns young mothers who haven’t worked for a long time, being on a maternity leave to take care of children under 3.

The employers are now obliged to inform the bodies of labour, employment and social protection about the open vacancies within 5 days since the day of their occurrence, in the written form (it was two weeks in the previous version). Moreover, they are obliged to inform the bodies of labour, employment and social protection that a vacation has been taken, on that very day. And finally, the employers have to notify the employment office about the forthcoming release of workers in no later than two months.

The state employment offices got the right to fully or partially cover the employers’ expenses on training the staff who appeared to be under the threat of getting fired. The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection claims that such measure was already in use, but now it has been set on a legislative basis.

The new version of the law also legislatively defines the categories of workers under the threat of getting fired. They are employees to be dismissed due to the liquidation of the organization, the cessation of the activities of an individual entrepreneur; employees warned about the downsizing or staff diminishing; employees who, on the initiative of an employer, are forced to work downtime or part-time, on leave without pay or with partial pay.

There is another innovation – the employers who involve citizen into paid community services, now have an opportunity to make not only fixed-term employment contracts, but also civil-legal ones. This is aimed at significant simplification of the employment procedure to such works, as well as at decreasing of material and time expenditures of the employers’ HR departments.

The updated law also contains amended age criteria, under which the employers fully recompense to the bodies of labour, employment and social protection the expenses for re-training or career enhancement of the unemployed out of the number of employees, fired by them due to downsizing or personnel lay-off (with an exception of those engaged into the unqualified labour, as well as those who reached the age limit of 50 for women and 55 for men), who have not gone through re-training or career enhancement at their previous workplace within 5 years before the dismissal. The age limit used to be 45 for women and 50 for men.

As reported earlier, the law “On Making Amendments and Additions to the Employment Law of the Republic of Belarus” was signed by the state leader on July 18, 2016.