On 16 September 2024, the Supreme Court lodged a constitutional petition to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the constitutionality of the provisions of Article 233.1 of the Labour Code of Ukraine (hereinafter, the “Code”), according to which an employee may file a claim for resolution of a labour dispute directly with the court within three months from the date when he or she learned or should have learned of a violation of his or her right, except as provided for in part two of this Article.
In the constitutional petition, the Supreme Court notes that on 19 July 2022, the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Optimisation of Labour Relations” No. 2352-IX came into force, which, among other things, amended Article 233 of the Code.
At the same time, the Supreme Court found that as a result of the amendments to the Code, the legislator, by limiting the right of an employee to file a claim for the recovery of wages due to him for a period of three months, without providing the employee with guarantees of court deliberation of the issue of renewal of the term for filing a claim, reduced the level of access to court for persons who are the subjects of a claim for the recovery of wage arrears, thereby allowing the narrowing of the content and scope of the existing constitutional rights of employees to file a claim with the court.
The constitutional petition has been distributed to the judge-rapporteur.
The text of the constitutional petition is available on the official website of the Court in the section “Pending before the Court”.
