Theme 11. Material responsibility of the parties to an employment agreement

Methodical recommendations for independent work

Material responsibility (liability for damage) of the parties to a labour agreement is the duty of one of its parties to compensate in accordance with legislation the property damage caused to other party of labour agreement as a consequence of violation of his (its) duties in labour relations. Material responsibility (unlike disciplinary) has bilateral, mutual nature. This type of responsibility can be applied both to an employee and to employer.

Material responsibility of employees is the independent type of legal responsibility that can be applied regardless of applying to employee disciplinary, administrative or criminal responsibility (part 3 of art. 130 of CLL).

It is necessary to find out, that the ground for material responsibility in labour relations is labour property offence; id est culpable violation by one of the parties to a labour agreement of the labour duties, that caused property damage to other party. It is necessary to expose and give legal description to the conditions of material responsibility applying and its types.

Depending on the form of guilt of employee, its persons and other circumstances, under which the damage was caused, to employee can be applied limited or full material responsibility. On occasion established by legislation increased material responsibility can be set.

In case of limited material liability (art. of art. 132, 133 CLL) for the harm caused to the employer at the implementation of labour duties, employees who caused harm should bear the material responsibility in the amount of the actual damage caused to the employer, but no more the average monthly earnings. Thus, the limited liability consists of duty of employee to recover harm in the limits envisaged by legislation. The full responsibility of the employee is understood to be his liability to compensate the caused damage at full scale. The full responsibility for the caused damage may be imposed on the employee only in the events specified in the legislation:

The full responsibility is imposed to the employee due to the following reasons:

• when the employee and employer concluded written contract about full individual responsibility for the damage

• shortage of values entrusted to him under a special contract of received by him under a non-recurrent document;

• intentional inflicting the damage;

• the damage caused by criminal actions of the employee if this was established by court;

• inflicting the damage under alcoholic, narcotic, or toxic intoxication;

• shortage, intentional destruction or waste of materials, products etc.;

• when the employee bears full responsibility for the damage inflicted at work in accordance with the legislation (cash keepers, communications enterprise workers etc.);

• inflicting damage at free time (use of vehicle that belong to an enterprise for personal goal)

Full material responsibility depending on labour organization can be divided into collective (teem) and individual.

Students must know current order of coverage of the harm inflicted by employee. The legal providing of coverage of material harm should be realized by two methods: 1) the employee who has caused damages to the employer may repair the damage in full or partially at his own free will.; 2) recovery by enforcement of the caused harm (part V of art. 130 and art. 136 of The CLL of Ukraine).

An employer compensates to the employee the harm caused in relation with: 1) violation of his right to work (in case of illegal refuse in a hire for job; at an temporary suspension from work; during illegal translation on another job; at an illegal demission from work; in case of wrong or not corresponding to the current legislation formulation of reasons of demission in a labour book which hinders to persons employment; in case of detention of final payment and landing of labour book at demission; in case of delay of implementation of decision about employee’s renewal at work); 2) failure to save of employees’ personal property during the work; 3) untimely or wrong processing of employee’s documents about labour and wages, that resulted in the infliction of harm to employee.

Dangerous and harmful labour conditions can inflict moral harm to an employee, to violate his normal living ties and require additional efforts for organization of the life. Therefore employer can bear not only material but also moral compensation of harm inflicted to an employee.

Plan of the lecture:

1. The notion of liability for breakage (material responsibility) according to the Labour Law. Ground and conditions of its applying. Dissimilarity from the civil liability.

2. Types of liability for breakage of employees. Calculation of amount of loss that should be covered by employee. The order of coverage of the harm inflicted by the employee.

3. The grounds and conditions of material responsibility of employer for the harm caused to employee.