Those who do not want to go to court can instead initially turn to a labor dispute committee to resolve a workplace dispute. Last year, the committees received nearly 2,500 applications, most commonly because an employer had failed to pay the agreed wages.

The committees should operate as efficiently as possible, but the Ministry of Economic Affairs acknowledges that this is not always the case. A number of shortcomings and bottlenecks have emerged in recent years, which the ministry now wants to address.

Liis Tõnismaa, an adviser on employment relations and the working environment at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, said a number of situations arising in employment disputes, for example, are not currently regulated in sufficient detail.

"Labor dispute committee chairs often find themselves in situations where they don't actually know whether they are acting correctly or how they should proceed. That can cause proceedings to drag on," Tõnismaa said.

Proceedings can be delayed, for example, when an employer or employee fails to attend a hearing without good reason or does not respond to requests. To save the parties time, the ministry now wants to give labor dispute committees the right to issue default decisions in justified cases.

"At the moment, every procedural step has to be carried out from beginning to end. Even if the other party doesn't respond, you have to wait for them to do so. This can take a very long time and the labor dispute committee can't do anything in the meantime," Tõnismaa said.

The Estonian Trade Union Confederation supports allowing decisions to be made by default. Nelli Loomets, a lawyer for the confederation, noted that employees account for the majority of those who turn to labor dispute committees with their concerns.

"I can give one specific example where an employee filed an application with a labor dispute committee. The employer was informed of the hearing but didn't show up. Everything had been sent to the employer and they were aware of it, but they didn't come. In a case like that, the employee could get a decision more quickly and take it to a bailiff sooner," Loomets said.

However, trade unions would actually prefer Estonia to establish a separate labor court. In their view, this would allow similar disputes to be resolved much more quickly.

"If we had an independent labor court, its decision would be a court ruling. At the moment, if a labor dispute committee issues a decision and it is appealed in court, the proceedings start again from scratch. So we have four levels for resolving labor disputes: the labor dispute committee, district court, circuit court and Supreme Court. If we had a labor court ruling, the next stages would be the circuit court and the Supreme Court, giving us three levels of court," she explained.

ERR was unable to obtain a comment from the Estonian Employers' Confederation, but the organization said it believes the ministry's plan for resolving labor disputes is moving in the right direction.

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