Labor will wait until spring – Newspaper Kommersant No. 232 (7433) of 12/14/2022

As the head of United Russia Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday, the Ministry of Labor, together with the relevant working group of the party, needs to prepare a new version of the law “On Employment in the Russian Federation” by the spring session of 2023. According to the promise of the head of the group, Andrey Isaev, the main thing in the document will be the prevention of unemployment, and not just assistance to those who have already lost their jobs. At the same time, the legal status of the self-employed in the labor market, which caused the most controversy during the preparation of the new version of the law, was proposed by the deputies to be settled later by separate regulations.

The new version of the law “On Employment in the Russian Federation” must be submitted to the State Duma for consideration in the spring session of 2023. This was announced yesterday during a meeting of representatives of United Russia, the Ministry of Labor, trade unions and employers, said the chairman of the ruling party, Dmitry Medvedev. “The fact that the question is ripe is obvious. The fact that employment centers were sleeping, they woke up a little during covid. Now they are in a state of light suspended animation. The law needs to be corrected and the entire sphere of employment should be cheered up,” he said.

Recall that the Ministry of Labor has been developing a new version of the law since the beginning of 2022, together with the United Russia working group to improve legislation in the field of promoting employment. As Andrey Isaev, head of the group, explained earlier, it is necessary to reform this element of labor legislation, because since the adoption of the current version of the law (more than 30 years ago), new forms of employment have appeared on the Russian labor market that do not fit into fixed legal norms. Among them are the employment of adolescents, vulnerable categories of the population, as well as the self-employed. In addition, during this time, especially in the last couple of years, he noted, the state policy in this area has also changed significantly.

As Mr. Isaev noted yesterday, one of the “qualitative differences” of the new version of the law from the existing one will be the emphasis on the prevention and prevention of unemployment. “The previous one was focused mainly on helping the unemployed, moreover, the chronically unemployed,” he stressed. According to the deputy, the bill being prepared opens up access to the network of state employment centers for new categories of people, including those who already have a job, but at the same time “are looking for something more suitable.” According to the parliamentarian, a number of support measures are also envisaged aimed at providing temporary employment for workers at risk of dismissal.

In addition, assistance will be provided to employers in a crisis situation. “Self-employed individual entrepreneurs who have ceased their activities for objective reasons will be able to fully use the services of the employment service. They will be able to receive the maximum amount of unemployment benefits,” the deputy promised.

Note that it was the status of the self-employed, according to Kommersant, that caused the greatest number of disagreements between the parties to the social partnership participating in the discussion of the new version of the law. While trade unions point to the need to recognize them as employees and provide them with all the benefits that are due, employers propose to equate them with workers hired under civil law contracts. The Ministry of Labor, obviously, supported the latter in this dispute – earlier, the department developed amendments to the federal law “On Social Insurance in the Russian Federation”, which involve the creation in Russia of an institution of voluntary social insurance for the self-employed on the basis of a unified Social Fund (for more details, see “Kommersant” dated November 21 ).

Dmitry Medvedev also drew attention to the duration of this dispute, proposing, as a compromise, by spring to create a version of the law that would reflect only basic proposals regarding new forms of employment (self-employed and platform employment), and the regulation of special issues to be moved to other regulations. This will help speed up the work on the new draft law on employment and not overload it with additional norms, Andrey Isaev agreed. “The general provisions of the Labor Code are entirely focused on wage labor relations. We propose to define platform employment in the law and make a reference to the fact that relations within platform employment are regulated by a separate federal law. After that, we start preparing the relevant bills that will regulate platform and self-employment,” he said.

We note that such a decision, although it will be in line with the generally accepted practice of creating new legal norms, risks dragging out the discussion on the status of the self-employed for an even longer period. This, however, will give the disputing parties time to find an optimal solution that best takes into account the real situation of such workers in the labor market. So far, let us recall, the growth dynamics of their number indicates the popularity of this tax regime (as of October 1 – 6 million people) – and if employers nevertheless begin to reduce personnel costs in the context of stagnation of production, there may be even more of them.

Anastasia Manuylova