Armenia: On basis of violations at garment factory, protocol on administrative and legal violations was drawn up, director was fined, 02 December 2022

[Summary translation prepared by Business and Human Rights Resource Center]

On October 6, news was published on one of the news sites that dozens of employees of the Armenian-Italian company operating in Yerevan went on strike. In a conversation with the website's journalist, the employees said that they are involved in overtime work without additional pay, often they work on weekends, holidays and memorial days, they are charged a large sum of money for one day's absence, and number of other labor law violations.

After studying the publication, the Republic of Armenia's Health and Labor Inspection Body (Inspection Body) launched administrative proceedings on October 7 for examining the compliance of the company with the articles [...] of the RA Labor Code. As part of the proceedings, inspections were held at the company from October 10 to 28, 2022...

The examination protocol was prepared on October 28... The inspection confirmed that the company did not calculate the downtime caused not by the employee, and did not pay the employees the salary for each hour of downtime in the amount of at least two thirds of their average hourly salary ammounting to AMD4,383,560. The company did not accurately calculate each employee's daily and (or) weekly working hours, and did not comply with the requirements of the law to involve employees in overtime work only in exceptional cases.

On November 5, a Requirement was issued for the company and a deadline was set to meet the requirements of the law.

As a result of the examination within the administrative proceeding, a Protocol about administrative violation was made on November 21 based on the violations recorded at the company. On November 25, a decision was made to impose an administrative penalty...

According to Part 1 of Article 1698 of the RA Code "On Administrative Offenses", the director of the company was subject to an administrative penalty - a quarter of the salary of AMD 4,383,560 that was not calculated and paid within the specified period - an administrative fine in the amount of AMD 1,095,890.