The Constitutional Court prohibited universities from dismissing professors elected through competition ahead of schedule

The Constitutional Court (CC) prohibited the management of universities from independently determining the duration of the employment contract of professors and teachers who were elected to their positions through competition. Resolution was adopted based on the results of an audit of articles 58, 67 and 332 of the Labor Code, a complaint against which was filed by ex-teacher at the Higher School of Economics Irina Alabastrova.

According to the court ruling, the norm prescribed in Part 9 of Article 332 of the Labor Code does not comply with the Constitution, since its wording allows the law to be interpreted in such a way that the university administration has the right to unilaterally, by its order, determine the term of the employment contract. The decision of the Constitutional Court states that this norm not only “depreciates the importance of the competitive procedure” when staffing universities with qualified employees, but also “leads to a disproportionate restriction of the right to work and infringement of the freedoms of scientific creativity and teaching.” The court did not satisfy Ms. Alabastrova’s complaint regarding other legislative norms.

In the summer of 2020, Irina Alabastrova and two of her colleagues, Ilya Guryanov and Elena Lukyanova, were fired from the Higher School of Economics after the expiration of their fixed-term employment contract. Before this, they passed a competition to fill a teaching position and continued to work, despite the fact that they had not concluded a new employment contract or additional agreements to the old one. As a general rule, in such cases, a fixed-term employment contract becomes indefinite. At the same time, HSE teachers instead received notification of a transfer to another position and the upcoming termination of their employment relationship. The Constitutional Court refused to consider the complaints of Ilya Guryanov and Elena Lukyanova, who also failed to appeal the decisions of the courts of first and appellate instances.

Read more about Irina Alabastrova’s complaint in the Kommersant article “Dismissal is the mother of learning”.

Polina Motyzlevskaya