On July 18th at 12:00 PM, the verdict in the case of three Metro workers who were fired more than one year ago is expected to be delivered. Defending the workers is the Foundation Against the Violation of Law’s (FAVL) Lawyer Kristina Gevorkyan.
The trial is being held at the Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun district court under the administration of Judge Simizar Hovsepyan. The judgment was supposed to be delivered on December 12, 2014. However, the case was reopened, with subsequent hearings being unduly delayed with various justifications.
For this reason, on June 26 Gevorkyan presented a motion to withdraw Judge Hovsepyan from the trial. The motion was rejected on June 30 for being “baseless.”
That same day, the Metro side’s petition to dismiss the lawsuit entirely due to the workers’ positions being cut and the inability to restore them back to work was discussed.
Gevorkyan argued for the Metro’s petition to be rejected because, after restarting the case, the proceedings are in the trial stage, where any document or piece of evidence submitted must be examined by the court and their acceptance must be justified. In accordance with Article 48, Paragraph 8, of the Civil Procedure Code, after the trial begins, additional evidence can be accepted from a party only if the applicant justifies why such evidence could not be presented before the trial began.
Nine days before the workers were fired on February 2, 2014, the Metro administration had produced a staff list of 24 individuals, including the three workers. On August 1, 2014, they established a shortened list of 20 employees, based on which they are now requesting that the lawsuit be dismissed. In this case, such a motion on the decision by the Metro administration to change its staff positions in 2014 could not be accepted by the court as evidence.
The court accepted Gevorkyan’s position, reasoning that this amendment cannot be considered an answer to the claim on the noted grounds. As for the Metro side, they did not even show up to the June 30 session. The court noted that the defendants had also been absent from a January hearing on the presentation of work records regarding the three fired employees.
It should be remembered that the three workers were dismissed under Article 113, Section 1, Point 6 of the Armenian Labor Code, which relates to loss of confidence toward an employee.
We hope that the court will deliver a judgment based on the facts and restore the rights of these workers who were barred from employment more than a year ago as “punishment” for exercising their basic civic rights. Namely, for participating in a demonstration against the government’s controversial private pension reform and presenting a petition signed by 67 employees to the Metro administration on the matter.
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