A few weeks ago, I came across a post on Reddit about an immigrant worker in Estonia who had successfully challenged his dismissal from Bolt through the Labour Dispute Committee (Töövaidluskomisjon, TVK). As he was unable to afford a lawyer, he used ChatGPT to help organise evidence, understand employment law and prepare his case. In the end, he received compensation.
It was an encouraging story. It reminded me that ordinary people can stand up for themselves, even when they are facing a much larger organisation. It was the kind of story that makes you feel that the system works.
Around the same time, I heard about a very different experience.
Georgina, an immigrant woman living in Estonia, had been unemployed and was registered with Töötukassa. Like many people trying to build a life in a new country, she was looking for an opportunity that would allow her to support herself while continuing to integrate into Estonian society.
Töötukassa informed her about a vacancy at an AI start-up, which was looking for Spanish speakers. During the interview, Georgina was told that the role would involve sales work, making calls and sending emails to potential clients. She was also transparent about attending Estonian language classes three mornings a week. According to Georgina, the company assured her this would not be a problem and offered her a one month contract with hours that reflected her availability.
At first, she was excited. Finding work as an immigrant can be difficult, and this seemed like an opportunity to gain experience while continuing to learn the language. The reality, however, turned out to be very different. Instead of carrying out the sales work she had expected, Georgina says she spent much of her time speaking with job applicants and explaining the role to prospective recruits. She also noticed something that struck her as unusual: the people being recruited appeared to be almost exclusively Spanish-speaking immigrant women.
Then there was the workplace culture. On one occasion, employees were asked to sing and dance in front of the group. Georgina initially assumed it was some kind of team-building exercise. Instead, she found it embarrassing and uncomfortable. She recalls feeling humiliated by the experience. Another woman who participated reportedly never returned to work after that day.
Three weeks into her employment, Georgina was already training newly hired recruits when she was unexpectedly called aside. She was told there was good news and bad news: the bad news was that her employment was ending immediately, the good news, she was told, was that she would still be paid for the three weeks she had worked and for the remainder of that day.
The decision came as a complete shock.
When she asked why she was being dismissed, Georgina says she was told that her schedule no longer suited the company’s needs and that they wanted someone who could work more hours, including weekends and public holidays. This was despite the fact that her availability had been discussed before she accepted the role. She was also informed that the person she had been training would be taking over her responsibilities.
Almost immediately, she was escorted to the company accountant and asked to sign termination documents. At the time, Georgina says she did not understand that she was signing a mutual termination agreement or that she might have had other options. Still trying to process what was happening, she signed the paperwork and left. She was never given copies of the documents.
That should have been the end of the story, but instead, it marked the beginning of a much more difficult experience. A few days later, Georgina returned to Töötukassa to arrange unemployment benefits. There she learned that she was still registered as an employee of the AI company. The situation left her in a difficult position. Because she was still listed as employed, she could not move forward with unemployment-related matters. She was advised to contact the company and request that they deregister her.
She sent an email to them asking to be deregistered. Around the same time, she wrote a post in a private Facebook group for Spanish-speaking women in Estonia, describing her experience and encouraging others to research employers carefully before accepting a position.
Soon afterwards, she received a phone call from the company’s owner. According to Georgina, the conversation focused less on resolving her employment status and more on the Facebook post she had written. She says she was criticised for sharing her experience and was told that the company was not planning to help her.
She later received a message that read:
“Please share the name of the company in which you plan to be employed, in order for me to also share our personal and professional opinion (reference).”
Perhaps there was an innocent explanation for that message. But many people reading it would feel uncomfortable. Some would find it intimidating. For an immigrant woman trying to establish herself in a new country, it is difficult to ignore the imbalance of power.
Eventually, Georgina was deregistered automatically when her contract period officially ended. However, during that time she was neither working nor receiving unemployment benefits. She had effectively fallen into a gap between two systems.
The experience left her shaken. A friend who worked as a lawyer encouraged her to pursue the matter and contact the Labour Inspectorate. She tried, but the process quickly became complicated. She was asked to provide documentation, including copies of the termination agreement she had signed. Georgina explained that she had never received those documents and did not want to contact the company again because of how she had been treated. Although Estonian labour law provides ways to obtain documents and other evidence from an employer where necessary, Georgina did not know this at the time. By then, the prospect of continuing the process felt overwhelming. The case was eventually closed.
At that point, Georgina made a decision that many people in similar situations would recognise. She gave up.
Not because she believed she had been treated fairly. Not because she suddenly trusted the process. But because she was exhausted. She was still learning Estonian and communicating with authorities in a language she had not yet mastered. She was trying to find new work and rebuild her confidence. What had started as a promising job opportunity had become a source of humiliation, stress and uncertainty.
A year later, Georgina has found another job and moved forward with her life, yet she says the experience permanently changed the way she views workplace disputes and access to justice.
What struck me most about her story is how ordinary it feels – not the specific details, but the vulnerability. Many immigrant women will recognise parts of this experience: accepting a job while still learning the language, trusting that paperwork has been handled correctly, feeling uncomfortable at work but not wanting to create conflict, losing a job and immediately worrying about rent, bills and what comes next.
Most people do not enter a workplace expecting they may one day need to gather evidence against their employer. Most do not save every document, record every conversation or study employment law before signing a contract. They assume that if something goes wrong, they will be able to explain what happened and someone will help.
The Reddit user who successfully challenged Bolt was able to translate his experience into a legal claim. He gathered evidence, understood the relevant procedures and presented his case in a way that the system could evaluate. Georgina’s experience was different. She was still trying to understand what had happened to her.
When we talk about access to justice, we often imagine people calmly collecting documents, researching legal procedures and building a case. Real life is rarely that tidy. People usually seek help when they are stressed, overwhelmed and trying to make sense of a situation that has left them feeling powerless. For immigrant women, those challenges can be even greater. Many are building professional networks from scratch. Some do not know where to find legal advice. Others are unfamiliar with Estonian administrative systems. Many worry that speaking up could affect future employment opportunities.
None of this means Estonia’s institutions are failing. Estonia has strong labour protections by international standards, and many people successfully use them. The law also provides important safeguards, including protections against contractual terms that contradict statutory rights and mechanisms for obtaining evidence where employers hold important documents. Georgina’s experience, however, raises a different question: how do people discover and use those protections when they are navigating an unfamiliar system while dealing with the stress of losing a job?
It also raises questions about start-up culture.
Estonia is rightly proud of its entrepreneurial success. Innovation has created opportunities for thousands of people, yet start-ups can sometimes operate in highly informal ways. Behaviour that would be unacceptable in larger organisations may be dismissed as part of a unique company culture. Employees, especially newcomers and junior staff, can feel pressure to tolerate situations they would never accept elsewhere.
When those experiences become negative, proving what happened can be difficult, particularly when so much of workplace culture exists outside formal documentation. Now note this is not an argument against entrepreneurship, nor is it a suggestion that all start-ups behave irresponsibly. It is simply a reminder that workplace protections matter most when power is unevenly distributed.
The contrast between these two stories is not really about one person winning and another losing – it is about who can access the system in the first place. One worker managed to translate his experience into a legal claim. The other struggled to translate her experience into the language the system required.
Justice is not only about having rights. It is also about understanding those rights, knowing where reliable information can be found, having access to support and having the emotional capacity to keep going when the process becomes difficult. Estonia already provides extensive public information about employment rights and labour disputes, much of it freely available in English. Yet Georgina’s story reminds us that information is only useful if people know it exists and feel able to use it when they need it most.
If we want justice to be accessible to everyone, we should not only ask whether the system works for people who already understand the rules. We should also ask how it works for those encountering the system for the first time, often at one of the most stressful moments in their working lives. Access to justice is not only about the rights the law provides, but also about whether ordinary people can realistically make use of them.
Further information:
Estonia provides comprehensive official guidance on employment rights and labour disputes, including English-language legislation and practical guidance from the Labour Inspectorate. Readers who would like to learn more about their rights are encouraged to consult the resources listed below.
Resources
Employment Contracts Act (English). Riigi Teataja. https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/akt/520062016003?leiaKehtiv
Labour Inspectorate. How to submit an application to the Labour Dispute Committee. https://www.ti.ee/en/extrajudicial-proceeding-labor-disputes/how-submit-application/recourse-labour-dispute-committee
Labour Inspectorate. Evidence in labour disputes. https://www.ti.ee/en/extrajudicial-proceeding-labor-disputes/how-submit-application/evidence
References
Labour Dispute Committee Order No. 4-1/1270/25, 17 July 2025. Request for correction of deficiencies in application.
Reddit discussion: “How I beat Bolt at the Töövaidluskomisjon (TVK) using ChatGPT”. How I beat Bolt at the Töövaidluskomisjon (TVK) using ChatGPT (And walked away with €14,500) : r/Eesti
