The government spares no effort to protect registered and unregistered employees, but some businessmen are wiping their feet on labor rights. Lena Nazaryan, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly, said this during the 28 April special sitting of the National Assembly, when the package of Drafts “On Making Addenda and Amendments to the RA Labor Code” and “On Making Addendum to the RA Code on Administrative Offenses” was discussed in the first reading.

Due to the current situation, there is a need to amend the Labor and Administrative Codes. According to the Deputy Minister, the Labor Code provides for some clarifications and definitions, which, according to the rapporteur, will facilitate the employer-employee legal relations in the conditions of the epidemic.

He mentioned that some cafe owners forced the employees who became beneficiaries of social assistance to share the money with them.

“Today, we touched the issue that “Ararat Cement” Company refused to extend the temporary contracts of 8 employees, knowing very well that in the conditions of this emergency people cannot complain,” he said.

Then he mentioned that the employees of the “Gloria” garment factory in Vanadzor had complained, the employees of the “Yerevan City” supermarket chain had alerted that the director had threatened not to pay their salary. “Now you have planned the control of the inspection body in case of people’s complaints, Mr. Udumyan, in order that this regulation is really of practical importance for people; are you ready to introduce an alarm system so that people call very urgently and in affordable manner report and submit complaints on violations of their labor rights?” I do not believe that this provision will work if this whistleblowing tool does not exist, because I do not have an absolutely brilliant opinion about the inspectorate and the statement of the head of the inspectorate on labor rights, I am sure you have heard it. Whether or not you will introduce whistleblowing system.”

In response to Lena Nazaryan’s statement, the Armenian Lawyers’ Association informs that the system for the protection of employees’ rights and the whistleblowing/reporting for employees BizProtect has been operating since 2017 through Bizprotect.am website.

Here, citizens have the right to submit applications on their business concerns. Alerts are also accepted anonymously. In this case, the application provided by the citizen, in this case the employee, will be fully encoded. In addition, there are additional privacy guarantees when using the Tor Internet browser, the IP address of the person’s computer will not be disclosed, so no one will be able to identify the whistleblower.

After submitting the application on the website, the information provided by the citizen is examined by experts who answer the applicant within two working days in order to resolve the issue raised by him.

Moreover, in recent days, due to the epidemic, the workers have alerted about the cases of violation of their labor rights. For example, the alarm received from a private company registered in Yeraskh community of Ararat region: “The type of activity I conduct is a fast food point. I have five registered employees. I have stopped working since 24 March, according to Commandant’s decision, without dismissing the employees, whom I have to pay for forced idleness. However, during these days there are fast food points and some grocery stores operating in my neighborhood that are also involved in preparing and sale of fast food in non-sanitary conditions.” After ascertaining the accuracy of the alert, a note was sent to the RA Commandant Tigran Avinyan’s office by BizProtect.

Another alarm was received against Lusine Vardanyan, the director of “Meghri Regional Medical Center” CJSC, regarding the protection of violated labor rights: “I am a witness in the criminal case against Lusine Vardanyan, the director of “Meghri RMC” CJSC. She is trying to harm me by not extending my employment contract. I received a notice about that.””

The other alarm was the reason for fining “Alex Textile” LLC for unregistered employees. The State Revenue Committee reported that there were 5 unregistered employees and a fine of 1,250,000 AMD was imposed.

And there are many such alarms from both employees and business representatives.