53.3% of Armenian organizations and experts consider labor code satisfactory

YEREVAN, April 14. /ARKA/. 53.3% of organizations and experts considered the country’s labor code as satisfactory, said the Director of VGM Partners Vardan Markosian in presenting the results of the sturdy.

The study was conducted by VGM Partners under the USAID Social Protection Strengthening program in June-October 2007. 23 experts and 200 private organizations (150 from Yerevan and 50 from Armenian regions) participated in the study.

The aim of the study was to assess their attitude toward the labor legislation, find out their preferences in reforming the labor code, establish potential of cooperation between the state and the private sectors and evaluate the cooperation between employers and the State Labor Inspection, he said.

Markosian said that 31.7% of respondents believe Armenian labor legislation is quite good, 8.6% of respondents say the legislation is unsatisfactory and a little bit more than 1% considered the labor legislation excellent.

Only 46.58% of respondents are familiar with the labor legislation, 37.63% have read some articles, 10.53% have just looked through the code; 5.26% of the respondents are not familiar with the code at all.

51.7% of respondents believe that the labor laws provide equal protection to employees’ and employers’ protection, whereas 11.1% say they do not protect anybody’s interests, Markosian said.

Some 25.28% believe the labor legislation is protecting rights of employees and only 4.4% say it mainly protects the interests of employers. N.V. –0--