Minimal salary in Georgia?

The Public Defender of Georgia has presented a survey on the relevance of the minimal wage policy which depicts rather unfortunate results.

The survey reads that the current Labor Code does not define the quantity of a minimum wage.

According to the Presidential Decree of 1999, the minimum monthly wage is 20 GEL. According to the Presidential Decree of 2005, the minimum monthly wage of the executive government employees is 135 GEL.

“In both cases, the minimum monthly wage is lower than the subsistence minimum (the subsistence minimum of an adult, able-bodied male was 157.3 GEL as of September 2016), which cannot be considered fair and adequate payment,” Ombudsman Ucha Nanuashvili says.

Based on the data of the Revenue Service, as of March 2016, 25,001 citizens of Georgia had salaries lower than 100 GEL, 62,681 people had lower than the subsistence minimum and 130, 282 had lower than the family subsistence minimum.

“These figures make it clear that Georgian employees cannot satisfy even their minimum needs with their wages,” Nanuashvili added.

Nanushvili has also released several recommendations to address the difficulties of the current situation.

He claims that the Parliament of Georgia should ratify Convention N131 of the International Labour Organization (1970), concerning the imposition of a minimal wage

The Labor Code of Georgia should be amended, and the definition of a minimum wage should be provided in it.

A fair minimum wage should be defined based on a relevant survey. The Trade Union believes that the relativity of the minimum wage with the average wage should be taken into account during the determination of the amount of the minimum wage, and it should be defined as at least 30% of the average wage

The quantity of a minimum wage should be defined according to both working hours and months, in order to prevent the reduction of part-time jobs

The laws of Georgia on the Labor Code of Georgia should provide for a mechanism that would annually review the minimum wage in the country. This obligation should be imposed on a social partnership tripartite commission, which should develop recommendations and submit them to the Prime Minister, which will be obliged to annually define the quantity of a minimal wage based on the commission’s recommendations.

Payment of the minimum wage should be controlled by the labour inspectorate, which must have appropriate levers to reveal violations and use sanctions against them.

The fact that Georgian employees’ rights are consistently violated is very obvious. In many cases, employers do not keep their promises or adhere to contract conditions, and blatantly violate their employees’ rights.

With regards to jobs that are risky, a majority of employers even refuse to ensure even minimal safety standards.

Georgia has no strong labour inspection service with enough power to guarantee that employees’ rights are protected in terms of salaries and working conditions.

If their rights are continually ignored as they are now, it will be extremely hard for Georgia to become a truly European country and suspend the flow of the country’s younger generations abroad.