Some aspects of legal consequences of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine decision’s No. 1-р/2023 dated 07.02.2023 for the practice of resolving labor disputes

Abstract

The article analyzes the legal consequences of the decision of the Constitutional Court No. 1-р/2023 of February 7, 2023 for the regulation of labor relations between the employer and teaching staff who are paid an old-age pension, and for the practice of resolving labor disputes regarding the recognition of their dismissal and reinstatement as illegal.
 Different types of situations are considered. For example, if such labor relations lasted/continues after February 7, 2023 and a labor dispute has not yet arisen, the most optimal “way out” from the point of view of the theory of labor law is to transfer teachers who are paid an old-age pension, by order of the employer, to open-ended labor contracts.
 Various variants of the influence of the decision of the KSU No. 1-r/2023 of February 7, 2023 on the practice of resolving labor disputes were also studied. Such labor disputes are being systematized. The following groups of authors are distinguished:
 
 labor disputes that arose after February 7, 2023 and, accordingly, were considered after this date;
 labor disputes that arose before February 7, 2023, but were considered/reviewed after February 7, 2023;
 labor disputes that arose and were considered by the court until February 7, 2023, if the decision was not reviewed or its review was completed before this date.
 
 The article concludes that the disputes of the first group are not characterized by problems. Court practice shows that such lawsuits to declare dismissal illegal and reinstatement are decided in favor of the plaintiff- teacher, who is paid an old-age pension.
 Labor disputes of the second group are resolved ambiguously in judicial practice. In one of the cases, the Supreme Court noted that the contested decision was based on the law that was in force at the time (as of the date of adoption of such a decision), and therefore no violations of substantive or procedural law were observed. On the other hand, in another case under a similar situation, the Supreme Court returned the case for a new consideration, pointing out the absence of other legal mechanisms for revising the court’s decision, which is based on an unconstitutional norm.
 Labor disputes of the third group are the most problematic and debatable, because formally, the final decision in the case was made before the adoption of the KSU decision No. 1-r/2023. Review of such cases under exceptional circumstances due to recognition as unconstitutional of the provisions of par. 3 ch. 2 Art. 22 of the Law is impossible. Violation of appellate or cassation review of such cases is complicated by missing the deadlines for such an appeal. “Summary” of the KSU decision under “newly discovered” circumstances is a debatable issue, although, in our opinion, in general, such an option is not excluded.