Regulatory authority of employers in the Republic of Serbia – content and restrictions

Abstract

An important addition and a guarantee of the managerial and disciplinary powers of the employer is his authorization to create norms regulating the rules, obligations and responsibilities under employment relationships. The regulatory powers of the employer include the adoption of a number of named and unnamed acts, and participation in collective bargaining. In this work a critical review is conducted of the scope and regulatory powers of the employers in the Republic of Serbia and the legal nature of the most important general acts of theirs. These matters are considered from the viewpoint of the industrial democracy ideas, according to which the settlement of the rights and obligations under employment relationships should preferably result from a compromise reached among social partners rather than having the employer imposing them unilaterally on workers as they are the weaker party to the employment relationship. The content of the principle of favouring the workers (in favorem laboratoris) is not fully determined in the laws of the Republic of Serbia. Instead, it is narrowed down to the negative aspect of coherence of the legal acts, i.e. to the resolution of the conflict between their norms and application of the legal provisions in lieu of the unfavourable stipulations of the collective bargaining agreement or the employer’s general act. This finding should not be regarded as underestimating the capacity of the in favorem laboratoris principle, bearing in mind that the latter considerably restricts the regulatory powers of the employer and prevents the abuse thereof, and lays down a fair restriction on the freedom of contracting between the parties to the employment relationship.