Prevention is prescribed for absent unemployment – Newspaper Kommersant No. 44 (7489) of 03/16/2023

The new version of the law “On employment of the population of the Russian Federation”, adopted yesterday by the State Duma in the first reading, according to the plan of its authors, aims to combat unemployment, which, however, is at a historical minimum. In conditions of shortage of personnel, the demand of the population even for improved services of public employment centers will decrease. The most controversial issues for the modern labor market of the Russian Federation – about platform employment and agency work, were not included in the document and will be discussed and, probably, regulated by separate laws after the differences are resolved.

Yesterday the State Duma approved in the first reading a new version of the federal law “On Employment”. It was prepared by a group of deputies and senators together with the Ministry of Labor throughout 2022 and was submitted for consideration by the chamber at the beginning of this year. As conceived by its authors, the new version will streamline the legal norms governing labor relations and improve the legal status of a number of measures to ensure employment. As one of the authors of the initiative, Andrey Isaev, deputy head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, noted, the previous version of the law “was mainly ideologically focused on helping the chronically unemployed, while the new one focuses on preventing unemployment and supporting employment.

Thus, the project consolidates measures to promote youth employment, including financial support for employers when hiring them, obliges employment services to cooperate with universities and colleges to provide career guidance and employment for young professionals, and proposes to take into account the needs of the labor market when approving target figures for budget admission to universities. In addition, the document requires measures to support youth employment from the government, including the state registration of young citizens as individual entrepreneurs and self-employed.

It is also proposed to expand access to the services of state employment centers – they will work with citizens at risk of dismissal, and with former participants in the military operation in Ukraine. In addition, it is proposed to develop the institution of paying unemployment benefits – Russians will be able to register in this capacity not only at the place of registration, but also at the place of stay, and former entrepreneurs and the self-employed are expected to receive benefits in the maximum amount.

Another difference in the new version of the law is the appearance in it of Art. 61 on the fight against illegal employment in the Russian Federation: the government will have to form an action plan, and the regions will create interdepartmental commissions to combat illegal employment in order to coordinate the work of employment services and tax authorities, as well as inform workers about their labor rights.

It should be noted that, despite the ambitions of the authors of the project, the changes that it introduces to labor legislation can hardly be called large-scale, at least for now. Probably, some of the new norms may appear in the draft for the second reading. Against the backdrop of a decrease in the unemployment rate to a historic low (3.6% in January 2023), the demand for employment support measures will inevitably fall. Measures to support one of the most vulnerable categories – youth – have already been prescribed by the Ministry of Labor in a separate federal program to promote employment for Russians under the age of 29 (for more details, see Kommersant of December 22, 2022).

The most controversial issue for the modern labor market of the Russian Federation – the employment of platform workers – was excluded from the bill: trade unions, employers and the Ministry of Labor will discuss it separately and draw up a separate bill (for more details, see “Kommersant” dated December 14, 2022). Another topical issue – the possibility of remote work from abroad – will obviously also be considered separately, depending on the political situation. Finally, the draft does not contain the norms on the regulation of agency work that have been discussed since 2016 – its current version allows employers to rely on only one of the chapters of the Labor Code when hiring agency personnel.

Anastasia Manuylova