GILS’s Labour Rights Index scores Georgian labour law across seven dimensions. The overall score of 5.7 out of 10 reflects genuine strengths and persistent gaps.
The GILS Labour Rights Index is a composite measure of the quality and coverage of Georgian labour law, scored across seven dimensions: employment protection, wage protection, working time, occupational safety, non-discrimination, collective labour rights, and social security. The 2024 index score for Georgia is 5.7 out of 10 — a score that reflects genuine legislative progress over the past decade alongside persistent structural gaps in the areas of collective labour rights and enforcement.
The methodology draws on four sources: a doctrinal analysis of Georgian legislation against ILO conventions and EU directives; a practitioner survey of Georgian labour lawyers and HR professionals assessing the gap between formal law and implementation; a review of Labour Inspection enforcement statistics; and a comparison with index scores for seven comparator countries in the Eastern Partnership and EU accession track. Georgia’s 5.7 compares to Moldova at 5.4, Armenia at 5.1, and Ukraine at 5.9 (based on pre-2022 legislation). EU candidate Serbia scores 6.3 and EU member Romania scores 7.1.
By dimension, Georgia’s strongest performance is in employment protection (7.2), where the Labour Code’s provisions on dismissal procedures, notice periods, and wrongful termination are reasonably comprehensive and aligned with ILO standards. Wage protection scores 6.4, reflecting the legal requirements for timely wage payment and the Labour Inspection mandate to investigate wage theft, tempered by the high rate of informal employment where these provisions cannot be enforced. Working time scores 5.8 — above average but below EU standards, particularly on break provisions and maximum daily working time.
The lowest dimension scores are in collective labour rights (2.8) and social security (4.9). Collective labour rights reflects the 4 percent collective bargaining coverage, the non-binding Tripartite Commission, and the procedural barriers to legal strike action. The social security score reflects the limited coverage of unemployment insurance (available only to formal sector workers who have contributed to the social security system for at least 12 months), the low pension replacement rates for workers who spent portions of their career in informal employment, and the absence of a comprehensive social safety net for informal workers.
The index is designed to be updated annually, allowing year-on-year tracking and benchmarking. The 5.7 score for 2024 represents an improvement of 0.9 points from the estimated baseline of 4.8 for 2013 — a meaningful but not dramatic improvement over eleven years. The pace of improvement will need to accelerate significantly if Georgia is to close the gap with comparator EU candidate countries before the labour law chapter becomes a formal subject of accession screening.
GILS Position: The Labour Rights Index is a policy accountability tool. A score of 5.7 means that Georgia’s labour law system delivers roughly 57 percent of the protections that international standards indicate workers should have. The 43 percent gap is not abstract — it represents real workers in real workplaces who lack the legal protection that their peers in EU member states enjoy. GILS will publish the updated index annually and welcomes engagement from the government, social partners, and civil society on the methodology.
Read the full GILS analysis: https://labour.edu.ge/labour-rights-index-georgia/