Ukrainian parliament set to vote on new labour law that threatens workers with a ‘rollback to the 19th century’
“With one letter [our employer] sent us away, and our dialogue turned into a monologue,” says Anton Gorb, a trade union representative at Ukraine’s largest private postal service, New Post.
Gorb is currently serving in Ukraine’s armed forces as the country fights against the Russian invasion. But he still represents his union members’ interests, and manages to find time to speak to me about how Ukraine’s wartime labour legislation is affecting people in the country.
“We are not going to give up, we are trying to win something back, but our relationship with our employer can no longer be restored,” Gorb says.
In March, the Ukrainian parliament passed wartime legislation that severely curtailed the ability of trade unions to represent their members, introduced ‘suspension of employment’ (meaning employees are not fired, but their work and wages are suspended) and gave employers the right to unilaterally suspend collective agreements.
This, Gorb explains, is what happened at New Post (Nova Poshta), once a flagship for good working relations between Ukrainian unions and management.
But beyond this temporary measure, a group of Ukrainian MPs and officials are now aiming to further ‘liberalise’ and ‘de-Sovietise’ the country’s labour laws. Under a draft law, people who work in small and medium-sized firms – those which have up to 250 employees – would, in effect, be...
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