Is Ikea required by Russian law to pay employees for the next 3 months, despite suspending all operations (sales, production) in Russia? Ikea announced they'll still be paying their 15,000 Russian employees their salaries for the next 3 months, even though they've suspended all operations in Russia, sales and production (17 stores and 3 factories). I'm curious if them still paying employees for the next 3 months is required by Russian law, or if Ikea went over and above that requirement.
The legal requirement in Russia is to pay or to continue to employ workers for two months following the notice of a layoff. The three month period was probably chosen to put to rest questions about how to treat a mid-month announcement and any questions over the effective date of the notice which may have post-dated the de facto shutdown of operations.
This depends on your employment agreement, if any, with the organization, and on the company's contract with the organization. You can quit your job with the organization, giving whatever notice your contract provides. The company can end its contract on whatever terms that contract permits. Most service contracts specify a fixed term, with renewal possible or in some cases automatic if notice to end the contract is not given by some specified date before the renewal date. But many other arrangements are possible. If no term is specified in the contract, and there is no provision for how much notice is required, then the company should give "reasonable" notice, which will probably be in line with the norms and customs of the industry involved in the relevant country. The specific law of that country may or may not provide a required minimum notice period. The contract between the company and the organization might provide that they would not hire any employees or recent ex-employees of the organization without consent for some period, perhaps a year. If there is such a provision it must be complied with unless it is not enforceable under the law of the jurisdiction. Different jurisdictions have very different attitudes toward such contract provisions. If such a provision were violated, and it was enforceable in the jurisdiction, the company would be liable for damages if the organization choose to enforce its contract. The contract between you and the organization might include a provision that you not leave to become employed (within some time limit) by one of the organization's customers, or perhaps by one you had worked with. If there is such a provision, it might or might not be enforceable in your jurisdiction. If it is enforceable, you must comply or be liable for damages. Even if there are no contract provisions preventing such employment of you by the company, you must not without permission take with you and use for the company's benefit any confidential information that is the property of the organization and is not already known to the company through legitimate means. If you do, both you and the company might be liable for damages under trade secret law. In the absence of any enforceable contractual provisions, and if no confidential information is taken by you, there should be no legal problems. The moral issues I am in no position to offer an opinion on, and are off-topic here anyway. If you were to quit, and the company were to then seek to break its contract because, in your absence the organization could not provide proper service, and you were then to accept employment with they company, and if further the company had known of your plans, both you and the company might be liable for damages to the organization, depending non the details of the law in your jurisdiction. This could be a tort of "interference with a contractual relation" or something of the sort. You should be very careful in agreeing to any such procedure. If there is a question as to whether a provision of a contract between the organization and either you or the company in enforceable, or whether a provision prohibits you leaving the organization to be employed by the company, that would need to be addressed by a lawyer who knows this area of the law in your jurisdiction, and the specifics of the contract, or eventually by a court. It is out of scope for this forum. Nothing in this situation will be a problem if the organization agrees to whatever is done. All possible problems occur only if it does not agree, and claims to have a legal right to prevent it or seek damages.
Provincial jurisdiction may need to be specified. But in general, assuming you are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement, you can be terminated for any reason or even no reason, as long as the contract is followed, the actual or apparent reason is not discriminatory or otherwise illegal and the termination procedure meets the provincial employment standards. The labour law usually provide requirements for notice periods or severance pay (or both), unless there exists a just cause (e.g. extreme disregard of duty, theft, repeated insubordination, etc.; lack of funds on the part of the employer is not a just cause). shouldn't the employer be fully responsible for the salary coverage of his employee in the course of his contract? Yes, but the contract is saying it can be terminated under certain conditions, after which time you are no longer &quot;in the course&quot; of your contract. Termination due to lack of funds is usually not considered discriminatory or otherwise illegal. You remain entitled to wages for any period you have worked. Additionally, the employer needs to respect the required notice period or severance pay under the provincial employment standards related to termination with or without cause, regardless of the funding situation.
The expression &quot;Russian person&quot; appears in Article 11 of the original, which says No claims in connection with any contract or transaction the performance of which has been affected, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, by the measures imposed under this Regulation, including claims for indemnity or any other claim of this type, such as a claim for compensation or a claim under a guarantee, notably a claim for extension or payment of a bond, guarantee or indemnity, particularly a financial guarantee or financial indemnity, of whatever form, shall be satisfied, if they are made by: (a) entities referred to in points (b) or (c) of Article 5, or listed in Annex III; (b) any other Russian person, entity or body; (c) any person, entity or body acting through or on behalf of one of the persons, entities or bodies referred to in points (a) or (b) of this paragraph The &quot;Whereas&quot; clause first introduces the word &quot;person&quot; saying Those measures comprise the freezing of funds and economic resources of certain natural and legal persons, entities and bodies and restrictions on certain investments, as a response to the illegal annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol Article 2 then gives various prohibitions, which are broader that the March prohibitions against certain transactions &quot;to any natural or legal person, entity or body in Russia or for use in Russia&quot;. Since the regulation applies to things that are not human and cannot be citizens, it does not mean &quot;citizen&quot;. It does include &quot;a human&quot;, as well as artificial persons such as corporations, or government bodies. A Russian citizen who lives and works entirely in e.g. Germany is not in the prohibited set if they are not shipping prohibited goods to Russia. The Syrian Commander-in-Chief of the PLA (who is not a resident of Russia) is, however, prohibited from obtaining &quot;dual use goods&quot; to be taken to and used in Russia. Article 11 is different in wording from other articles stating various prohibitions, which repeat that long expression with &quot;in Russia or for use in Russia&quot;. Art. 11 says that under certain circumstances, contract claims shall not be satisfied if the claims are made by (a) entities referred to in points (b) or (c) of Article 5, or listed in Annex III; (b) any other Russian person, entity or body; Apart from the explicit list in Annex III, (b-c) or Art. 5 is (b) a legal person, entity or body established outside the Union whose proprietary rights are owned for more than 50 %by an entity listed in Annex III; or (c) a legal person, entity or body acting on behalf or at the direction of an entity referred to in point (b) of this paragraph or listed in Annex III. Therefore, the expression &quot;any other Russian person, entity or body&quot; refers to something much more expansive. On the face of it, it has to mean that no &quot;Russian person&quot; in any sense can sue for non-performance arising from this regulation.
Where your office is, is your designated workspace. You get the public holidays wherever your official office address is. If you live and work in Hessia, then you get the 11 public holidays there. If you live in Hessia but work right over the border in Bavaria, you get 14 public holidays, even if you live in Hessia. Now, where do you work in case of remote work? That depends on what your official work address is. Do you connect remotely to an office in Bavaria where you are located on paper or do you have no such office? If you have an office you work at officially, then that is your agreed-upon, designated workplace, and in our example, if that's in Bavaria you get the 14 public holidays. If you don't are designated to work in an office in Bavaria and may log in remotely there, then your agreed-upon, designated workplace is your home address, and if that is in Hessia, you get the 11 public holidays there. Where your company's central is... Now, let's assume the company is seated in Brandenburg, which has 12 public holidays. That doesn't matter at all: the Feieratagsrecht of the place you work (officially) dictates your public holidays. So either the laws of your designated location apply: either Hessia's 11 public holidays if your home is the designated workplace, or Bavaria's 14 if the office you connect to is the designated workplace but you remote-connect to it. It would by the way matter if you are designated to be in a location for that exact day: you could be designated to work in a location that has no public holiday on that day, then you don't get that day. However, the Brandenburg company can decide to say &quot;You get our extra holidays in addition. Have fun with the extra free day&quot; - that'd be extra in the contract, not the legal requirement.
Not going to hold up. Dutch Supreme Court confirmed 2012-09-21 in LJN BW6135 that arbitration is still covered by the the right to an independent judge, as established in Golder v UK, ECHR 1975-02-21, nr. 4451/70. Stack Exchange can't decide the rules themselves. (The Dutch case confirms that sector-wide arbitration is in fact legal, with regard to a standard arbitration clause commonly used in the Dutch building sector. The arbiter was found to be independent in that case precisely because they weren't picked by the builder involved.) The GDPR is only indirectly relevant, but the fact that it's mentioned does mean that there is an indisputable intent to provide services to EU consumers. (See section 23 of the GDPR, or its national equivalents). As such, you can't hide behind a US business address. If you intend to do business in the EU, it's under EU laws - all of them. You can't say that only the GDPR applies, and not other rules. I'm having a bit of a problem finding a source, but I'm fairly confident that consumers have the right to sue at their own, local court, overruling the default of suing in the court where the counterparty is located. Finally, I have the right under national law (Dutch: BW 6:236 start and sub-n) to strike the arbitration clause up to 30 days after the conflict arises, and demand a court decision. That's not 30 days after I accept the "Public Network Terms", that's 30 days after the arbitration is invoked. Dutch law explicitly allows arbitration abroad, and arbiters may apply foreign law, but as written the arbitration clause has no legal basis in the Netherlands, and any arbitration resolution would therefore not be considered valid. You may wonder if it matters to Stack Exchange that the arbitration decision would not hold in the EU. Well, consider a clause like Indemnification, which demands the user indemnifies Stack Exchange. That's a pretty empty demand if it's not enforceable.
They can't simply keep the money; that's against the law. But in a situation like this, it's easy to get lost in the bureaucracy. The company may be in violation of different laws, re: For Your Information | United States Department of Labor, so you can try pointing this out in another email or letter. The threat of the Feds or other enforcement agency looking into the matter may make something happen. Or, try this: find the CEO (or a similarly high-ranked executive) on LinkedIn; many have open messaging in interest of good PR. Message/email them and carefully (and nicely) explain the situation. (A CEO will likely have an assistant monitoring their LinkedIn account. But, there are many stories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos personally responding to emails.) Someone will make it happen and the employees who have not been helpful will be in hot water.
There is a general EU anti-discrimination directive 2000/43 which in Article 3(1)(h) which applies the standards to housing. This document analyzes Czech anti-discrimination law. If you were discriminated against on the basis of being English, that could support legal action. There is no current EU or Czech legislation that guarantees a right to operate in the language of your choice. There have been calls to create some such legislation. Such legislation would be the implementation of Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which says that Any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited. There is under Article 9 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages a right to use regional or minority languages in judicial proceedings, but there is no generic "right to use your own language". There are occasional cases where governments are sued because their actions linguistically discriminate. As observed here, there was a case in Belgium where the government was sued for not subsidizing French education in non-French territories, but the court said that "Art. 14 cannot be interpreted as guaranteeing children or parents a right to obtain instruction in a language of his choice".