Responsibility in the employment relationship: Distinctive features of disciplinary liability in the general and special employment relations regime

Abstract

Establishing an employment relationship involves acquiring or assuming certain rights, duties and responsibilities for both parties in the employment relationship, in accordance with the law, the collective agreement, the employer's general administrative acts, and the employment contract. An employment relationship involves not only the parties' rights and duties but also their responsibility. Responsibility can be of legal and non-legal nature. Legal responsibility (liability) is of greater importance for the employees. On the whole, legal responsibility may be disciplinary, material, administrative (for misdemeanors), economic (for economic offenses) and criminal in nature. The subject matter of labour law includes only disciplinary and material liability of the employee, while other types of legal responsibility are the subject matter of other legal disciplines. Although the former labour legislation of the Republic of Serbia regulated the disciplinary liability of the employees in detail, such practice has been completely abandoned in the new Labour Act, which only regulates the summary dismissal procedure. Unlike the Labour Act, the Civil Servants Act contains numerous provisions on the disciplinary and material liability of civil servants. This Act also regulates procedural issues regarding the rules for initiating and conducting a disciplinary proceeding, entering disciplinary sanctions in or removing them from the personnel files, etc. In this paper, the author analyzes disciplinary liability by examining the specifics of substantive and procedural norms for establishing this form of liability in the general and special employment relations regime. From the aspect of the rule of law, the author provides a critical analysis of such legislative solutions and considers their legal justification.