At today’s meeting, the initiators of the draft amendments, members of the Parliament of Georgia, president of the Trade Unions Confederation, business ombudsman, representatives of the business association and other stakeholders were discussing the amendments to be made to the Organic Law – Labour Code of Georgia.
According to Irakli Petriashvili, the President of Trade Unions Confederation, only a part of regulations envisaged in the European Social Charter is taken into consideration in the draft amendments to the Labour Code of Georgia. According to him, the new code will not increase the shadow economy, but will bring the employment out of the shadow.
“I support the initiative to make conclusions after the dialogue with the state-minded business and make certain amendments to the Code. It is the absolute nonsense that amendments to the code will increase the shadow economy. On the contrary, it will bring the employment out of the shadow to some extent. How will the shadow economy be increased to even more extent? 58 per cent of employment is shadowed. The initiative, starting with the minimum wages and other initiatives, will accumulate more funds in the State Budget to have more social responsibilities before the citizens.
In fact, these initiatives facilitate the money laundering. Unless overtime work is paid at a different rate, no one can achieve results by individual disputes. I can tell you what will be the outcomes of establishing the minimum wages. Today, 130 thousand people in the country have the wages less than the established minimum subsistence. The fact is that no one agrees to work for GEL 20 a month. Nowadays, the monthly established minimum wages in the business sector is GEL 20. You cannot employ anyone for GEL 20. What does it mean? Are the employment and tax evasion shadowed? There are people whose formal wage is GEL 20, but in fact no tax is paid to the state budget. Real wages may be GEL 1000 and it may be received through the envelope, thus employers to evade state taxes” – Irakli Petriashvili said.
© ongo.ge