Procedural law and substantive labour law

Abstract

Procedural labour law does not cover all matters arising from the application of substantive labour law. In principle, it applies to claims arising from employment relationship and to a certain group of cases considered in a no-trial procedure. This is due to the fact that in the past a separate procedure and separate judiciary were created mainly with a view to strengthening the procedural protection of employee interests. For this reason, the protection did not extend to collective labour law, non-employee employment, and labour market law. Nowadays, there is a need to strengthen the systemic position of the labour judiciary and to extend its substantive jurisdiction to all cases — regardless of their legal nature — within the limits of substantive law. This is due to the need to strengthen the role of labour law as well as the continuous expansion and complexity of its legal regulations which entail the need for far-reaching specialization of judges as well as the system and procedural rules they apply.