What Unfair Dismissal Means and What Challenging It Gives You
Unfair dismissal and reinstatement are legal categories defined by the Georgian Labour Code: where the termination of an employment contract is unfounded or procedurally defective, the employee may challenge the employer's decision in court and seek to have it declared null. This page is about the remedies the law gives you after the challenge — reinstatement, equivalent work or compensation, together with compensation for forced absence — and the deadlines within which those remedies must be pursued.
The right to challenge flows from the termination procedure itself. The employee may, within 30 calendar days of receiving the employer's notice of termination, demand written substantiation of the ground, and the employer must respond within 7 calendar days. If the substantiation never arrives or does not justify the dismissal, the window for applying to the court is again 30 calendar days. Where the employer fails to substantiate the ground within 7 calendar days, the burden of proving the factual circumstances of the dispute shifts to the employer — the employee's strongest procedural advantage.
When a Dismissal Is Unlawful
The list of grounds for terminating an employment contract is closed: it includes economic, technological or organizational changes necessitating a reduction of the workforce; expiry of the contract term; completion of the work stipulated in the contract; the employee's own-initiative departure by written declaration; written agreement of the parties; lack of qualification or professional skills; gross or repeated breach of duties; prolonged incapacity under defined conditions; and other grounds named in the Code. Termination on any other ground is prohibited. Dismissals for breach of duty deserve particular scrutiny: a breach of obligations imposed by the internal labour rules is a ground for termination only where those rules form part of the employment contract.
The Code also defines periods in which termination is prohibited: on grounds of discrimination; during the protected period following the employer's notification of pregnancy; in connection with call-up or service in the military or alternative labour service; and while serving as a jury member — each of these makes annulment a realistic prospect. Moreover, except for death or liquidation, where the employer terminates on the economic, qualification, prolonged-incapacity or other-objective-circumstance grounds, it must give at least 30 calendar days' prior written notice and pay compensation of at least 1 month's remuneration; where notice of only 3 calendar days is given, the compensation must be at least 2 months' remuneration.