The employment of the minors in the context of exercising the child’s right to work

Exercising the child’s right to work requires a good legislative framework for labour relations and a set of conditions prescribed to ensure that the minors work in a way that does not harm their safety, health, physical, mental and moral development and does not interfere with their education. The aim of this paper is to consider both the international and national standards regulating the children’s work and challenges in their application in practice. It also points out the necessary actions aimed at improving the position of the minors in the labour law environment. A special attention is paid to the issues related to the prohibition of discrimination against children in the field of work, the consent for employment including the regulation of the minimum age for employment and protection at work. The paper focuses in particular on the issue of the implementation of labour legislation in practice of Republic of Serbia, especially in the context of the efficiency of control mechanisms and the results of inspections conducted in 2019 by the Labour Inspectorate of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs, which revealed a series of violations of the child’s right to work. In this paper, in order to grasp an insight into this issue, there have been used the historical comparative-legal and theoretical-analytical methods. The research findings indicate that the national labour legislation regulating the minors` work is harmonised with the international standards to a significant extent, but there is a room for their improvement. It is also necessary to improve the mechanisms of inspection and the efficiency of the application of legislative provisions in practice.