The Legal Position of Dockers and the Scope of the Law
If you are looking for information about longshore workers’ claims, one thing must be said honestly at the outset: Georgian law does not contain a separate compensation statute for port workers analogous to the special act in force in the United States. A docker in Georgia is an ordinary employee, and his claim rests on the Law of Georgia on Safety at Work and the general labour legislation. This law applies to all branches of economic activity in the sphere of safety at work, including labour relations regulated by the Organic Law of Georgia — the Labour Code of Georgia — and the Law of Georgia on Public Service.
Article 2 of the law also provides that, unless special legislation provides otherwise, the law applies to the persons defined by the Law of Georgia on the Labour of Seafarers — for those working in ports this underlines once more that safety-at-work standards fully cover them. At the same time, the law does not apply to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the Special State Protection Service and the State Security Service, together with their subordinate agencies, in matters regulated by their special legislation, nor to labour activity during a state of emergency or martial law.
Obligations of the Employer
Under Article 5 of the law, the employer must ensure safety at work in the working space, taking into account the size of the enterprise, the number of employees, the working conditions and the corresponding risks. The employer must comply with the legal norms and rules in the sphere of safety at work; must ensure that no harm comes to the employee or to any other person present in the working space; must ensure that physical, chemical and biological hazardous factors do not create a danger to their safety or health; and must record accidents at work, cases of occupational disease and dangerous incidents and provide the relevant information to the employee or the employees’ representative on request.
For port work the training rules are particularly important: the employer must provide training and instruction to employees in a language they understand — at hiring, before work begins, on transfer to another workplace or change of work, before the introduction of a new technological process or new machinery, and repeatedly according to a plan. Training takes place during working hours; the days spent in training count as justified absence and are paid in proportion to working hours; and the training and instruction are free of charge for the employee. The employer must not employ a person under 18 years of age on work that may harm his health or safety, nor pregnant or breastfeeding women on work harmful or of particular risk to the mother or the child. At workplaces with increased danger, harmful and hazardous conditions, the employer must, at its own expense, insure the employee against accidents at work, and must bear all costs connected with safety at work and sanitary-hygienic measures. Engaging an external safety specialist or service does not release the employer from liability under the law, and the employer is released from liability only where the accident was caused by circumstances that could not have been foreseen or were beyond its control — with the burden of proving this resting on the employer itself.
Prevention and Risk Assessment
Article 6 obliges the employer to assess, at every stage of the work, the risk of harm to health, to update the risk assessment document and to take appropriate measures. The general principles of prevention are: avoiding existing risks; evaluating those risks that cannot be avoided; reducing the danger, including eliminating it at its source; substituting hazardous factors with safe or less dangerous ones where possible; developing a consistent policy of preventive measures and a written document containing the measures, their deadlines, the persons responsible and the resources required; giving collective protective measures priority over individual ones; training employees; and adapting the work to the employee.
The risk assessment document must be kept by the employer in the prescribed manner. The employer must also define in writing the duties and responsibilities of employees in the sphere of safety at work, allow only persons who have undergone appropriate training or instruction to work at risk-bearing workplaces, identify and record hazardous workplaces, ensure the continuous and proper functioning of protection and control systems, and equip employees free of charge with effective individual protective means wherever this is necessary to protect their life or health. A docker’s workplace — a port, a warehouse, a container terminal — is precisely such a risk-bearing environment, which is why these obligations are anything but formal for a port operator or a stevedoring company.
Classification of Accidents and the Notification Procedure
Article 14 of the law classifies accidents in the working space according to their consequences and the number of persons injured at one time: an accident is light where it causes minor injury without loss of working capacity or with loss of working capacity for not more than 3 days; of medium severity where the injury causes loss of working capacity from 3 to 40 days; severe where it results in permanent incapacity for work, grave damage to health or temporary incapacity lasting more than 40 calendar days; fatal where the person dies at the workplace or within 1 year of the accident; and mass where 3 or more persons are injured, including one severe or one fatal accident.
Article 15 establishes the notification and investigation procedure. The employee must immediately inform the employer of any accident he witnessed or suffered, if his state of health allows. The employer must immediately take the measures necessary to avert further danger to life and health; in severe, fatal and mass cases it must preserve the scene of the accident unchanged until the arrival of the representatives of the competent investigative bodies, except where measures are necessary to protect life or health or to prevent serious economic damage — in which case a description of the situation at the workplace must be drawn out. Within 24 hours of the accident the employer must notify the employees’ association, if one exists, and the employees’ representative; in the cases of medium, severe, fatal and mass accidents it must also notify the supervisory body, and where the facts related to the accident point to signs of a crime — the law enforcement bodies. Accidents are recorded with the joint participation of the representatives of the competent agencies, the safety-at-work specialist and, where his health allows, the injured employee. If the accident happened to an employee in the working space of another employer, that employer must immediately notify the injured employee’s employer.
Liability and Administrative Penalties
Liability for violating safety-at-work norms is determined by this law and by other legislative acts of Georgia, while matters connected with administrative proceedings are also regulated by the Administrative Offences Code. Under Article 18, the following administrative penalties may be applied for an offence: a warning, a fine and suspension of the work process. When applying a warning or a fine, the supervisory body issues an instruction to remedy the violation within a reasonable period; after the period expires, a check follows, and if the violation has not been remedied, a fine is applied and an additional reasonable period is given, or the work process is suspended.
If a fine is not paid within the period set, the offender is charged a surcharge in double the amount of the fine; if the fine or surcharge remains unpaid within 30 days of the imposition of the surcharge, compulsory enforcement follows. Suspension of the work process operates as follows: where a critical non-conformity is discovered, the supervisory body must suspend the ongoing work process at the specific section of the working space or workplace if the lack of protection of safety-at-work norms creates a threat to the life or health of an employee or a third party, and it must apply to the court to have the suspension confirmed; the motion must be submitted within 24 hours of issuing the act, failing which the suspension is deemed revoked and the work process restored. The decision of the supervisory body is appealed in the manner established by Georgian legislation, and a substantiated decision refusing to resume the work process is appealed to the court.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a separate compensation law for dockers in Georgia?
No. A docker in Georgia is an ordinary employee whose claim rests on the Law on Safety at Work, which applies to every branch of economic activity.
How are workplace accidents classified?
As light — without loss of working capacity or up to 3 days; as of medium severity — from 3 to 40 days; as severe — permanent incapacity or more than 40 calendar days; as fatal — death within 1 year of the accident; as mass — 3 or more injured persons.
Who notifies an accident and within what time?
The employee informs the employer immediately; the employer, within 24 hours, notifies the employees’ representative and, in medium, severe, fatal and mass cases, also the supervisory body.
Who pays for accident insurance?
At workplaces with increased danger, harmful and hazardous conditions the employer must insure the employee against accidents at work at its own expense; all safety-at-work costs are likewise borne by the employer.
How We Help on Legal.ge
On Legal.ge we will help you prepare and bring a longshore worker’s claim: we will assess the classification of the accident, verify the performance of the employer’s obligations, help you preserve evidence and present an insurance claim, and defend your rights before the supervisory body and the courts. Contact our team on the very first day after the accident.