**1. Subject of the dispute:**
The plaintiff challenged her dismissal due to staff reduction, seeking reinstatement to her position and payment of average earnings for the period of forced absenteeism due to the employer’s failure to fulfill the duty to offer all available vacant positions.
**2. Arguments of the Court:**
* The Supreme Court emphasized that the employer is obliged to offer vacant positions to the employee not only at the moment of notice of dismissal, but throughout the entire period up to and including the day of actual dismissal.
* The Court stressed that the territorial remoteness of divisions does not exempt the employer from the duty to offer vacancies available in any structural unit of the enterprise.
* The burden of proving the lawfulness of the dismissal, in particular the fact of the absence of vacancies, lies exclusively with the employer, not the employee.
* The lower courts erroneously shifted the duty to prove the existence of vacancies to the plaintiff without properly examining the staffing table and the actual state of affairs at the enterprise.
* The Supreme Court noted that references to minutes of meetings of participants dated later than the date of dismissal cannot serve as proper evidence of the lawfulness of the employer’s actions at the time of the employee’s release.
* The Court also indicated that the absence of a position in the staffing table at the time of consideration of the case is not an obstacle to the reinstatement of an employee if the dismissal has been deemed unlawful.
**3. Court decision:**
The Supreme Court overturned the decisions of the courts of first and appellate instances (including additional decisions on the distribution of court costs) and remanded the case for a new trial to the court of first instance.
