Olga Melnychenko participated in the conference of the European Employment Lawyers Association

This year the annual conference of the European Employment Lawyers Association (EELA), which has been bringing together employment law practitioners across the European Union since 1996, welcomed legal experts from Ukraine for the first time in its history. 

Our colleague Olga Melnychenko, head of Market Entry & Exit, Employment & Immigration practice at PwC Legal Ukraine, took part in a panel discussion on June 24 devoted to Employee activism and the new world of labour relations. 

During the panel the labour experts shared their views on how an emerging trend of employee activism manifests itself in employee-employer relations in many contexts that go beyond conventional discussions about employees’ day-to-day work. Olga and other panel members also spoke about the growing willingness of employees to make their personal contributions into building the company’s strategy and to understand how their contributions help the company meet its goals. These trends are observed in many industries among employees of various competencies and grades. Employees also tend to be more open about their concerns during their interactions with management, and expect that those concerns will be properly addressed. 

Olga also shared that to a certain extent these trends found their reflection in Ukraine’s labour reform. In her speech Olga also outlined that modernisation of labour legislation is still on-going despite the martial law in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government demonstrates its strong determination to bring the labour legislation in line with the European standards and the world’s best practices. 

We are grateful to EELA for this fantastic opportunity and are looking forward to the next events to share experience and achievements of Ukraine. We highly appreciate the enormous support of the EU countries for Ukraine and are proud to contribute to strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and the EU.