Summary

comments on the judgment of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court in Civil Case No. 3-2-1-95-03

The Employment Contracts Act in force in Estonia was passed already in 1992. Although supplemented and amended on several occasions, the Act has become outdated in several aspects and there is a need for a new Act. Despite the deficiencies of the Employment Contracts Act, it should, nevertheless, be applied in the regulation of employment relationships. However, developments in both the economic conditions and legal thought in Estonia should be taken into account. In some cases, the case law regarding employment relations is not flexible enough. The author scrutinises the judgment rendered by the Supreme Court on 30 September 2003 and analyses two issues addressed in the judgment: whether the labour dispute body should have the authority to re-qualify an employee’s request to terminate his or her employment contract on a specific basis as the termination request on another basis and whether in the case of withholding of an employment record book by the employer the Employment Contracts Act should be continued to be applied prescribing the employer’s obligation to pay to the employee his or her average salary for the days of delay in delivery of the employment record book. In the author’s opinion, the case law should abandon the somewhat too rigid principle of protecting the employee in the Estonian employment law and should find opportunities to improve the co-operation between the parties and to liberalise the employment relations to some extent.