An employee whose salary payment is delayed by at least two weeks will be able to terminate the employment contract immediately, with the right to receive severance pay, according to amendments to the Labour Law that have reached the Cabinet of Ministers.
Although the amendments still have to be reviewed by the Saeima, this is one of the planned changes on which there is conditional consensus, namely, both trade union representatives and employers’ organisations have managed to agree on it.
At present, the law stipulates that even if the employer does not pay the employee’s salary on time, the employee may leave the job, but in such a case the employer is not obliged to pay severance.
However, sometimes employers do not pay employees’ salaries when there is some dispute between the two parties. For example, if an employee has caused losses to the company, but the two sides cannot agree on the amount of the loss caused. “Using their position of power, employers sometimes, for example, do not pay the full salary, making deductions or not paying it at all, while the employee cannot do anything,” points out the Deputy Chair of the Free Trade Union Confederation of Latvia, Gita Oškāja, adding that at present most disputes concerning employment relations are about non-payment of wages or severance pay.
Data from the State Labour Inspectorate (VDI) show that in 2024 the institution received 788 submissions related to remuneration, and more than 1150 complaints about the payment of amounts of money due to employees.
Overall, the number of submissions examined by the VDI last year increased by 35% compared to 2023. The VDI points out that a large part of the submissions were related to knowledge of the state language, as the ongoing war in Ukraine has understandably raised feelings of alarm and threat in Latvia, and therefore the issue of strengthening the Latvian language as the state language, including in the work environment, has become more topical. As a result, the number of submissions related to job advertisements published by employers in which a requirement to know some foreign language is possibly unjustifiably indicated has increased more than tenfold over three years and has reached 1221 submissions. However, this is still much less than the complaints about remuneration and other amounts payable to employees.
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/darbinieks-vares-aiziet-bez-bridinajuma-ja-alga-kavejas-par-divam-nedelam-bus-jaizmaksa-atlaisanas-pabalsts/
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