Beauty saloon in Yerevan. (Nazik Armenakyan /Daphne)
With high levels unemployment, Armenians are especially vulnerable to exploitation from unscrupulous employers. Given a lack of legal protections, employers are free to discriminate against female applicants based on their age or how they look. For some women, the only answer they see is to undergo cosmetic procedures, to make them look younger in the hope of finding a job. [Read more…]
Screengrab from a video by jailed rights activist and video-blogger Mehman Huseynov (Mehman Huseynov)
Elderly people in Azerbaijan are often seen working well beyond the age of retirement, often in hard physical jobs. The government has tried to celebrate this, claiming that no one wants to retire in Azerbaijan, but others point out that low state pensions give many no other choice. [Read more…]
Small business in the streets of Nalchik (Aslan Urumov /OC Media)
While official statistics may say otherwise, many see unemployment in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia as among the worst in Russia. Deindustrialisation, social alienation, and local corruption have all played a part in the region’s stagnation.
Yerevan bus station (Armine Avetisyan /OC Media)
Low pay and high unemployment have led many Armenian women to seek work beyond the country’s borders. Despite fears of trafficking, often abusive working conditions, and a closed border with Turkey, the allure of higher salaries have led thousands to leave Armenia, mainly to Russia and even Turkey — a country many consider an ‘enemy land’.
Tevdore Natsabidze, a labourer at the railway tunnel construction site, walks to work. Tevdore was one of roughly fifty striking employees accusing the construction company of violating labour safety rules (Luka Pertaia /OC Media)
Railway construction in central Georgia is a key part of ambitious plans to modernise Georgia’s infrastructure. Despite warnings from trade unions and official inspectors, life for the workers remains a ‘living hell’.
(Armine Avetisyan /Ampop)
One in five workers in Armenia is employed in informal sector, many of them in agriculture. Lack of employment contracts often subjects them to Labour Code violations by employers.
Protest against Fresco (Sopho Aptsiauri /OC Media)
With 24-hour shifts, collective responsibility, and heavy surveillance, employees of Georgian supermarkets complain of being exploited. While supermarket owners justify the hard working conditions with a need to improve customer service, trade unions say the problem lies in a lack of regulations. [Read more…]
The Ministry of Labor and Social Development of Abkhazia (/Sputnik Abkhazia)
A new Labour Code came into force in Abkhazia in January 2017, which on paper, significantly expands the rights of workers. But the law has limitations, and not all workers know their rights.
The largest supermarket chain in Armenia — Yerevan City — belongs to Republican Party MP Samvel Aleksanyan (David Stepanyan /OC Media)
With murky boundaries between the authorities and big supermarket chains in Armenia, their government linked owners enjoy a degree of impunity. This has and does lead to fear, intimidation, and exploitation of workers, and even voter fraud. [Read more…]
A beach in Sukhum (Dominik K. Cagara/ Archive)
Many in Abkhazia have lamented the failure of this year’s tourist season, connecting it directly to rising levels of crime. The usual problems were compounded by high profile attacks on tourists and an explosion at an ammunition depot which left two tourists dead.