What an Employment Contract Terms Dispute Is
A dispute over the terms of an employment contract is one of the most common individual labour disputes under the Georgian Labour Code. Article 61 defines a dispute as a disagreement arising during the employment relationship whose resolution is in the parties' lawful interests; it is born the moment one party sends the other written notice of the disagreement, and disagreements connected with the essential terms of an individual employment contract are expressly listed among the statutory grounds. Consideration of a dispute does not suspend the relationship: both sides keep performing until it is resolved.
In practice, such disputes typically emerge when an employer changes the salary, working or rest time, workplace or job duties without consent, or when an employee asks for an amendment and the employer refuses. In both scenarios the outcome is decided by the Code's procedure, and following it correctly is the main precondition for success.
What Counts as an Essential Contract Term
Article 14 of the Code enumerates the terms an employment contract must essentially define: information about the parties; the start date of work and the duration of the relationship; working time and rest time; the workplace, including multiple work locations where no permanent place is fixed; the position and the type or description of the work; remuneration, including supplements, and the manner of its payment; the procedure for remunerating overtime work; the duration of paid and unpaid leave and the rules for granting it; the procedure for terminating the relationship; and the provisions of collective agreements where they regulate working conditions differently. A change in, or an incomplete recording of, these terms most often becomes the subject of the dispute.
The same article obliges the employer, on request, to issue a certificate of employment covering the work performed, the pay and the contract's duration. Where several contracts address the same term, the last one prevails; a term contradicting the law or the collective agreement is void unless it improves the employee's position. These rules fix the baseline against which the dispute is examined.