On April 15, the Ukrainian Association of Furniture Manufactures held a webinar on “How to secure business and keep the team quarantined”. Spensers Law Firm Advisor Maya Svyatashova answered the key questions.

Ms Svyatashova kindly shared with her members her experience in the field of labour relations and spoke about the current changes that have been made in the labour legislation in connection with the introduction of quarantine in Ukraine. 

The lawyer started her speech with the issues that need to be created between the two parties to the labour relations, namely establishing and maintaining normal communication. According to her, being silent and hiding something from the team is a road to nowhere: “ To speak honestly with the team about where the company is going, about steps to overcome the crisis, about plans, about possible cuts – this is all that your subordinates need to know”, – adds Ms Svyatashova. Also, in a conversation with staffers, the lawyer is increasingly hearing those successful companies continue to seek good professionals, thus securing themselves with powerful staff after quarantine. Therefore, she advises companies to evaluate each specialist very carefully and to allocate a conditional skeleton from the best specialists to retain them by any means so that, first, they will not be enticed by other companies, and second, that your company may be in a crisis. the best specialists. Such key players must also be provided with appropriate guarantees.

Mainly, the lawyer identified the main scenarios of labour relations with the staff during the quarantine. The main ones are layoffs, redundancies, idle time, paid leave, a vacation without pay, and remote work, detailing each type.

At the time of quarantine, the lawyer does not advise to dismiss employees on the initiative of the employer, because soon, after quarantine, the dismissal of employees will be a massive appeal to the courts and labour offices, which will result in numerous compensation and updates for employers. Managers resort to downsizing when production stops and there is an inability to retain a large staff. For this purpose, a special order must be prepared, which describes all the circumstances why the production was stopped, in this case through quarantine. The lawyer also emphasizes that managers must notify employees two months before the date of redundancy. At the same time, it is worth paying attention to a group of statutory employees who are prohibited from being included in redundancy.

Downtime is also introduced for quarantine all the time and is introduced in connection with production interruption. In this case, no employees are required to be informed, no compensation is required, but the wages should still be continued and their amount is legally determined by at least ⅔ the employee’s salary. Still, Ms Svyatashova advises familiarizing the employees with this order, again to avoid trouble during possible inspections by the supervisory authorities. Regarding paid leave here, the law has not changed, but here about unpaid holidays, changes occurred within the term of such leave. According to the amendments, if the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine introduces a quarantine, the period of such leave shall be for the whole period of quarantine, following Article 84 of the Labor Code of Ukraine, and under Art. 26 of the Law of Ukraine on vacations. To properly arrange this type of employment relationship, a lawyer advises to make references to the given norms of the law, as well as to refer to quarantine. And in any case, do not even try to put pressure on the workers in any way.

Changes in labour law also addressed the norms that introduced the concept of homework or telework. At the same time, Maya Svyatashova again appeals for the issuance of an appropriate order, which in this case can secure the employer in case of, say, an employee’s injury. Therefore, it is important to make changes to the mode of operation of the enterprise, specifying the smallest details. At the same time, she noted that with this type of work, the internal work schedule does not affect the employee, and the corresponding changes should be made in the employment contract. Remote work is paid in full unless you indicate otherwise in the changes to the contract.

In the next section of the webinar, Maya Svyatashova answered a series of questions from the listeners and finally stated that quarantine is a great opportunity to clean up the business as a whole, to conduct an audit, to prepare documentation, to optimize the avenues and to improve work.

Recording of the webinar can be viewed at the link https://bit.ly/distant_job

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