The dissertation is a scientific study dedicated to determining the essence and features of minimum state standards and guarantees in remuneration, identifying problematic aspects of rule-making and law enforcement in this area, as well as developing substantiated theoretical and practical proposals and recommendations for their resolution.
It proceeds from the understanding that, in Ukraine, remuneration is manifested as a complex of labour-law relations that secure the employer’s duty to reward the worker (ordinarily in monetary form) for work performed under the employment contract (and, where applicable, a collective agreement), whether by wages, fees. Remuneration functions as a primary means of ensuring an adequate standard of living: monetary pay, as the core component of remuneration, constitutes the principal income of most of the working-age population and thus conditions their ability to live in socially safe circumstances consistent with a decent life; it is closely linked to standards of decent work, whose application underwrites a dignified quality of working life – and, indirectly, life beyond work; and, at the macro level, wage dynamics materially influence the country’s socio-economic development, which in turn shapes the background conditions for socially protected existence for workers and their families within a modern welfare state.
Statutory minimum standards of remuneration are mandatory baseline rules set by law. They specify floor thresholds for overall pay and its constituent elements and establish accompanying measures to ensure sufficient and fair remuneration for employees. In substance, this framework comprises the statutory minimum wage; minimum multipliers for enhanced pay under special working-time regimes – namely overtime, work on public holidays and rest days, and night work; minimum pay rules for idle time not attributable to the worker (including during the commissioning of new production or products); and temporal and procedural guarantees governing the frequency and timing of wage payments together with the indexation (uprating) of employees’ monetary income. By contrast, statutory minimum guarantees in remuneration are legally secured measures (anchored at regulatory, institutional and organisational levels and supported by political commitment and economic capacity) intended to ensure the outcomes envisaged by minimum pay standards. They encompass, among other things, a presumption in favour of employees’ legitimate interests and the inviolability of rights derived from minimum pay rules; limits on payment in kind to preserve transparency over the amount and structure of remuneration; a right to written information about pay; protection of legitimate expectations through predictable, timely and complete wage payment; entitlement to supplementary payments and premium rates where applicable; and access to legal protection via the full range of fora, procedures and remedies for the enforcement of the right to remuneration.
A comprehensive analysis of Ukraine’s national framework for regulating minimum state standards and guarantees in remuneration indicates that it rests, first, on a bedrock of general legal principles together with sector-specific precepts (freedom of labour and the prohibition of forced labour, social partnership and collective bargaining, a favourable legal status for the employee, and the social security of employment relations) supplemented by institutional principles such as the establishment of stable yet periodically reviewed minimum standards and guarantees, the scientific validity of the forms, methods and means used to regulate pay, universal coverage, the priority of protecting employees’ subjective rights and legitimate interests in remuneration, and the maintenance of wages’ purchasing power. Secondly, it comprises a corpus of regulatory instruments that includes primary legislation on labour, employment and remuneration (alongside other statutes defining the legal status of particular categories of workers) and subordinate legislation governing pay.
The dissertation also undertakes a granular analysis of international legal standards governing minimum state standards and guarantees of remuneration as articulated in foundational human-rights instruments and in labour- and social-rights treaties. At their core, these standards require that workers receive remuneration that is fair and untainted by forced labour, including debt bondage; call for a socially oriented wage policy consistent with decent-work commitments; entrench equality and the prohibition of pay discrimination; and mandate the establishment, by law, of a binding minimum wage together with effective state protection of wages, including the timely payment of all sums due upon dismissal.
