Employment mediation enables an employee and an employer to end a disagreement arising from the employment relationship with the help of a mediator, without court proceedings. In Georgia this process is regulated by the Law on Mediation, whose Article 1 defines the scope of application, Article 7 the way mediation starts, and Article 12 the suspension of the running of the limitation period during private mediation. On this page we explain how these norms operate in an employment dispute, which employment disputes fall under this regime, and what you should expect if the relationship reaches conflict.
The Scope of the Law over Employment Disputes (Article 1)
The Law on Mediation determines the principles of conducting mediation, the rules of organisation and operation of the professional association of mediators, the powers of a mediator, and the rules of recognition and enforcement of international mediation settlements. The law applies to mediation conducted on the basis of an agreement on mediation, and also to court mediation defined by the Civil Procedure Code. The boundary is important, however: the law does not apply to notarial mediation, to mediation provided for by the Code of Juvenile Justice, and — decisively for employment disputes — to mediation provided for by the Labour Code for the examination and resolution of a collective dispute. This means that individual employment disputes fall under the general regime of this law, while a collective labour dispute follows the special conciliation procedures reflected in the Labour Code.
The Start of Mediation and the Role of the Court (Article 7)
Under the first paragraph of Article 7, the precondition for starting mediation is an agreement on mediation or the transfer of the case to a mediator by a court or another authorised body on a basis provided for by law or at the parties’ request. Mediation starts on the basis of an application to the mediator by the parties or one of them, or as a result of the transfer of the case by the court, and is considered started from that moment. At a party’s request the mediator issues a document confirming the start of the mediation — in an employment dispute this document is often needed to confirm cooperation with the court or the employer. Where, under the agreement on mediation, the parties undertake not to apply to a court or arbitration before the fulfilment of defined conditions, the court or arbitration will not examine the dispute until those conditions are met, except where the claimant confirms that without examination it will suffer irreparable harm. A party has the right to refuse participation at any stage of the mediation.