ENSURING DECENT WORK FOR CIVIL SERVANTS IN THE CONTEXT OF IMPLEMENTING THE REFORM OF SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE CIVIL SERVICE

Abstract

The article clarifies the specific requirements for securing decent work for civil servants in the course of social-security reform of the civil service. Since 2025, Ukraine has pursued the reform in a largely piecemeal manner, concentrating chiefly on improving the system of material support. Yet the legislative changes adopted to date do not fully address the problems of remuneration and benefits for civil servants in the justice system and must be assessed against the growing deficit of the State Budget of Ukraine (a factor that complicates the State’s capacity to discharge its social function in this domain). These constraints also bear upon the State’s ability to maintain a safe environment for civil service social security under conditions of globalisation, limiting both the effective use of globalisation’s positive effects and the prevention or mitigation of its negative ones. The difficulty is compounded by the long-standing neglect of social-security needs across all categories of civil servants and branches of public authority. Against this background, the reform should explicitly entrench, in the Law of Ukraine “On Civil Service”, a universal entitlement of all civil servants to free medical care in public healthcare institutions, alongside statutory duties requiring every public authority to provide psychological support and to prevent and counteract occupational burnout. The statute should also include a dedicated provision defining the purpose, objectives, and substantive content of decent work for civil servants, and should set out basic rules and standards consistent with the aims of civil-service social security. In practical terms, those standards ought to sustain an orderly and stable course of service and labour relations, uphold a favourable moral-psychological climate within the workforce, prevent conflicts of interest and labour disputes, and counteract mobbing (psychological harassment) and related practices. Framed in this way, the reform would align decent-work guarantees with the wider social-security architecture of the civil service, thereby strengthening institutional resilience in the face of globalising pressures while safeguarding the dignity, health, and professional autonomy of civil servants.