Abstract: | The right of workers to information is becoming an increasingly important topic of debates in labour law. It has established itself as an extremely important right in labour law, as without adequate information, the worker cannot react or take appropriate action. The right to information also affects a number of other rights under employment and social security law.
Another key distinction in the right of workers to information is when the individual worker is informed and when the right of workers to information is realised through the information of workers' representatives. For example, an individual worker is informed of matters affecting his or her employment status as an individual. Thus, an analysis of international, EU and national legal sources has shown that the worker must be informed in a number of areas of employment law, such as in the event of ordinary or extraordinary termination of the employment contract, pay day, posting to work from home, the imposition of overtime, the annual working time schedule, the temporary reassignment of working time, and in the event of the granting of annual leave, etc. In the case of a worker's right to be informed, it is important to ensure that the worker is not subject to any obligation to inform his or her employer in the event of the termination of the contract. In most of these cases, it will also be compulsory to inform the worker in writing. However, in a number of the cases analysed, the regulation of the right to information of workers in the Republic of Slovenia is more favourable than international or EU law.
On the other hand, from the point of view of the workers' legal position, the right of workers to be informed, including through their representatives, of important matters affecting their position with the employer (the undertaking) is also of vital importance. Thus, workers' representatives are informed (and consulted) on matters affecting the collective of workers (i.e. not only the individual worker). However, there is a distinction between being informed through trade unions or through elected workers' representatives (e.g. works councils), as the legal acts confer different powers and tasks on each of these workers' representatives. Thus, in general, workers' representatives will be informed, e.g. in cases of collective redundancies, transfers of undertakings, general acts of the employer, night work, but workers' representatives will also have powers in relation to the right of information of the worker when it comes to deciding on the rights of the individual worker, e.g. in the case of dismissal, disciplinary liability, etc. |
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