Refusal for the future – Kommersant

The Constitutional Court (CC) refused to check the norms of the Labor Code following the complaints of former HSE lecturers Elena Lukyanova and Ilya Guryanov. The court referred to an earlier decision, in which it had already given an answer to the questions raised, and even recognized the disputed norm as not in conformity with the Constitution. This is stated in the refusal definitions published on the CC website. However, the bill submitted to the State Duma in pursuance of the decision of the Constitutional Court only partially solves the problem of the applicants, the lawyer of Ms. Lukyanova believes.

Former teachers of the Higher School of Economics Elena Lukyanova and Ilya Guryanov in March challenged Art. 332 of the Labor Code, which gives the university administration the right to conclude a fixed-term employment contract with teachers who have passed the competitive selection. This puts teachers in a worse position compared to ordinary employees, and the standard guarantees of labor rights do not apply to them, the applicants pointed out.

Both lecturers, like a number of their colleagues, were fired from the HSE in 2020 after many years of service. They successfully passed the competition for the positions of the teaching staff and continued to work, but suddenly received a notice of termination of the employment contract. The university administration referred to a new supplementary agreement, which was signed only by the university: a unilaterally issued order sent to an employee is equated to a bilateral agreement between him and the employer, the HSE leadership insisted.

The applicants argued that such an approach is discriminatory, as it does not allow applying to teachers the general rule, which implies: if the employment contract is not renewed in time, then the contract becomes indefinite. Mr. Guryanov emphasized that this practice puts university teachers in a position dependent on the administration, which leads to a violation of their academic freedoms. However, the Constitutional Court did not assess the level of such freedoms, but only indicated in the refusal rulings that in 2022 it had already spoken out on this issue in a resolution on the complaint of Alexei Podakov and even recognized that the practice of concluding short-term contracts does not guarantee the labor rights of employees. In this regard, the Constitutional Court ordered the legislator to specify the current norms, and before that ordered to conclude an employment contract with university professors for a period of at least three years.

The bill, pursuant to this decision of the Constitutional Court, was submitted to the State Duma in September 2022 by a group of deputies and senators and adopted in the first reading in February 2023. Elena Lukyanova’s lawyer Vitaliy Isakov says the new regulation only partly answers the questions posed by its applicant. Although it guarantees a minimum term of an employment contract, teachers still have no guarantees for the rest of its conditions, and it is not even clear in what order it should be concluded. But at the same time, the Constitutional Court agreed with the position stated in the complaint and said a very important thing, the lawyer emphasizes: the court indicated that the norm of the Labor Code, which provides for the transformation of an employment contract into an open-ended one, if none of the parties demanded its termination, applies to everyone without exception workers. According to Mr. Isakov, now it is possible to try to achieve a revision of the court decisions on a labor dispute, although usually the courts do not recognize the rulings of the Constitutional Court as a basis for reviewing a case.

Formally, this is a refusal, but in fact such a definition of the Constitutional Court makes it possible to go to court again, agrees Ivan Brikulsky from the Institute of Law and Public Policy (the organization is included in the register of foreign agents).

Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR), the chairman of the relevant Duma committee on labor and social policy, told Kommersant that the deadline for accepting amendments to the second reading of the bill on the terms of teachers’ contracts was extended until May 26, but it is almost ready for the second reading and will soon be considered. According to the deputy, the delay was caused by the long approval of the amendments in the government. The co-author of the project, the head of the Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education, Sergei Kabyshev (A Just Russia – For Truth), told Kommersant that no conceptual amendments to the document had been received. “We are implementing the decision of the Constitutional Court, we are looking for a balance between the university and the teacher,” said Mr. Kabyshev. He also said that the bill is likely to be publicly discussed.

Anastasia Kornya, Ksenia Veretennikova