Lapse of Time in Labour Lawsuits in Light of Administrative Court of Justice Procedure

Despite detailed research on the origin and effects of the statute of limitations in private law cases, this issue has not been examined much in labour cases. The main question in the present study is whether the application of the statute of limitations in labour lawsuits is generally accepted? What are the current legal positions and the practical procedures of the Administrative Court of Justice on this issue and what are its challenges? The hypothesis is that official authorities and branches of the Court, in light of the legal bill approved by the Revolutionary Council, have been considering the permissibility of the statute of limitations in labour cases for about a decade, but gradually, with the explicit repeal of the provisions of that bill by the Labour Law of 1980, the official procedures in this regard changed and, in a different approach and in line with the protection of the right to work and its branches, the citation to the statute of limitations has been rejected. Overall, the aforementioned development is evaluated as positive and supportive, but some legislative developments in the field of the Administrative Court of Justice, especially in expressing the legal deadlines for appealing against the rulings of the authorities in labour law, can institutionalize the statute of limitations in labour relations, which is not evaluated as fair from the perspective of the protective dimension of labour law. This research is done through a library and descriptive-analytical method examining the laws and judicial procedures. The unanimous decision of the General Board of the Court in 2003, in rejecting the statute of limitations in labour claims, implicitly repeals the unanimous decision of 1996. This development should be evaluated in order to ensure the protective aspects of the labour law and the right to appeal and to consider its rules mandatory. Of course, the 2003 unanimous ruling can be challenged in this regard, as it is based solely on the declaration of the general repeal of the Revolutionary Council's resolution by the 1990 Labour Law, and the Court did not refer to the lack of clarification on the lapse of time in the aforementioned law and the exception of the lapse of time against the originality and application of the right to appeal. In addition, it is obvious that in the case of workers who benefited during the time of the Revolutionary Council's resolution, invoking the existence of the lapse of time is not prohibited. In addition, at present, due to the notification and implementation of the Law of the Administrative Court of Justice Amendment (10/2/2013) and in implementation of Note 2 of Article 16 of that law, the deadline for objecting the final decisions of quasi-judicial authorities (including the authorities subject to Article 157 of the Labour Code, namely the Determination Board and the Labour & Employer Dispute Resolution Board) has been announced as three months for individuals within the country and six months for individuals residing abroad from court ruling delivery date. Filing a lawsuit in the Court to reverse the judgmnt outside the prescribed deadlines is somehow an implicit acknowledgement of the lapse of time in those lawsuits. If this assumption is accepted, the unanimous decision of the General Board of the Court in 2003 has been changed by the intervention of the legislator, and therefore, during the reign of the Court's reform law, lapse of time has been accepted at least in appealing against the final judgment of the relevant authorities subject to the Labour Code. It seems that the Legislator and the judiciary should look at the issue of lapse of time without considering the corresponding provisions in the rules of private law and by considering the aspects of human rights and its close connection with the human dignity of workers and ignore it as much as possible. Apart from that, the Revolutionary Council resolution was passed in an environment where, firstly, the Labor Law approved by the government after the revolution had not yet been passed, and secondly, the passage of the Labor Law was delayed for several years due to fundamental conflicts between the Islamic Consultative Assembly and the jurists of the Guardian Council regarding the necessity of passing that law or being content with hiring the persons rules stipulated in the Civil Code. Unanimous decision of the General Board of the Court in 2003 in rejecting the passage of time in labor lawsuits implicitly repeals the unanimous decision of 1996 of court. This development should be evaluated in order to ensure the protective aspects of the Labour Law and the right to appeal and to consider its rules mandatory. The recognition of lapse of time in labor law is incompatible with the philosophy of its emergence; that is, protecting workers and making labor relations fair. It is better that the legislator and the judges of the Court, in their decisions and opinions, get committed to the requirements of labor law and the need to guarantee the updated fundamental rights of workers. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the spirit of labor law and to consider the historical, economic, social and human rights reasons for turning to labor law in the country and gradually distancing from jurisprudential rules and articles related to the hiring of individuals in the civil law