Marukyan's Proposal to Pashinyan

Edmon Marukyan, the leader of the 'Enlightened Armenia' faction, has made a post on his Facebook page, stating that there is a need for a state body to protect the labor rights of citizens.

“Dear colleagues,

Today, I have addressed the Prime Minister in writing, proposing to establish a State Labor Inspectorate within the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The issue is that the State Labor Inspectorate has not been operational for several years, while the current Health and Labor Inspection Body does not have the full scope of powers that the State Labor Inspectorate previously had (duration of work, vacations, experience, unregistered employees, wage-related issues, and so on).

Moreover, this particularly concerns the mass and periodic violations carried out by numerous employers. Thus, thousands of citizens work under extremely poor conditions—without the legally established time limits, without normal days off—earning a meager salary. Others are not registered at all, which will later deprive them of the right to count their working years for pension eligibility and they will not receive a work pension for those years, and so on.

Thus, no state body is engaged in regulating the issues in the labor sector, and therefore, the worker can only turn to the court for the protection of their violated rights. It is well-known that filing a lawsuit is an expensive and time-consuming process; deep legal knowledge is required to go to court, or one must resort to the services of a lawyer.

Will a worker under these circumstances turn to the court? Clearly not; most citizens simply avoid becoming involved in legal proceedings as they are not confident that they can win against the employer even if they are in the right. Employers take advantage of this fact and continue to violate workers' rights, as the unemployment rate in the country is very high and finding another worker is not particularly challenging.

This means that the state has left its citizen alone with the employer, whereas it has a positive obligation to protect the labor rights of citizens.

Therefore, it is necessary to recreate the State Labor Inspectorate, whose authority will be to oversee the field of labor law, both on its own initiative and based on relevant applications,” Marukyan wrote.