The Industrial Disputes Court was established by the Annual Holiday with Payment Law 5/73. It consists of a President who is appointed by the Supreme Court from a list of lawyers of not less than 5 years’ practice and two members representing employers and workers respectively who are appointed by the President of the Court from a list of names submitted to the Minister of Labour.

According to section 12 of the Annual Holiday with Payment Law 5/73the Industrial Disputes Court has exclusive jurisdiction in all cases that arise out of industrial conflict including all the cases where exclusive jurisdiction is granted to the Court by any Law or regulation. Thus the Court is the appropriate tribunal to hear cases regarding unfair dismissal, annual holiday claims, claims concerning wages and pregnancy related issues.
The Court is not bound by rules of evidence. The procedure rules before the Court have been recently amended the major change being that now a decision of the Industrial Disputes can now be appealed to the Supreme Court without leave from the Industrial Disputes Court. Any appeal to the Supreme Court lies on a point of law only.

The definition of the phrase a ‘point of law’ has been examined and clarified by the Supreme Court of Cyprus in a number of cases. In Civil Application No. 21/84 the Supreme Court held that what amounts to a pure question of law is perhaps easy to define but hard to apply to the particular circumstances of a case. The question of law raised, whatever its nature, must necessarily be one relevant to the facts of the case. A pure question of law cannot be one exticated or detached from the facts of the case for in those circumstances it would be an academic question of law. Thus, the Court continued, whenever an issue revolves round the application of the law to given facts, it raises a pure question of law. So long as the facts to which the Court is required to apply the law are not called in question, the point is a legal one. It merely raises questions bearing on the interpretation and the scope of the law. Exploration of the ambit of the law is always a question of law.

The Court is composed of the President of the Court and two lay members drawn from trade unions and employer’s associations respectively. The President decides legal questions and his/her decision is binding on the other members. The Court is also under the obligation to give a fully reasoned decision after the hearing of a case.
In the light of the above it is clear that the Industrial Disputes Court remains the sole arbiter of fact , in all the cases before it. This function is extremely important as in most of the cases the conclusions of the Court on the facts of a case are decisive to its outcome.