Деякі невідповідності проєкту Трудового кодексу 2026 року чинному законодавству про працю України

The article provides a comprehensive scholarly legal analysis of the draft codified act in the field of Ukrainian labor law through the prism of the constitutional foundations of state independence and sovereignty, the principle of the rule of law, as well as established national and international law-enforcement practice. It substantiates that the proposed draft approaches do not ensure the evolutionary development of current labor legislation but instead lead to the destruction of a system of legal concepts, institutions, and mechanisms for the protection of workers’ rights that has been formed over decades. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the draft’s departure from the human-centered concept of labor law, manifested in the devaluation of the worker’s role as a key subject of labor relations and the shifting of emphasis toward the interests of the employer. It is demonstrated that the exclusion of the state from the circle of full participants in the legal regulation of labor relations, in particular in the process of collective bargaining regulation, contradicts the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, the Act of Proclamation of Independence of Ukraine, international standards of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, as well as the logic of the democratic development of a state governed by the rule of law. The problems of deregulation of labor relations arising from the limitation of the state’s role as a guarantor of the balance of interests of workers, employers, and society as a whole are analyzed. A separate block of the study is devoted to the shortcomings in defining the legal status of the employer, in particular the absence of clear features of a legal entity and an individual employer, the ignoring of the role of an individual entrepreneur as an employer, which creates prerequisites for shadow employment and losses of public revenues. The novelties concerning the institution of business trips, the abolition of the contract as a special form of the employment agreement, the substitution of public and social control with the internal “control” of the employer, as well as the inconsistency of the draft provisions with ILO Convention No. 158 are critically assessed. The draft norms on monitoring employees’ work correspondence are examined in correlation with the current legislation on electronic documents and document management. Emphasis is placed on the absence of proper legal regulation of labor relations under martial law, in particular regarding guarantees for persons discharged from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as on the lack of regulation of humanitarian law issues in the sphere of labor. It is concluded that the draft does not constitute a qualitatively new normative legal act, does not eliminate systemic violations of workers’ rights, but instead deepens legislative uncertainty and legal inaccuracy, which poses a threat to the democratic foundations of labor law in Ukraine and its European integration course.