The Ministry of Labor plans to expand the list of indicators indicating violation of workers’ rights by companies

The Ministry of Labor plans to expand the list of indicators indicating violation of workers’ rights by companies. We are talking about identifying cases of paying wages below the minimum wage and reducing contributions to the Social Fund by more than half in the absence of personnel changes. According to experts, the expansion of the list may indicate a possible imminent lifting of the moratorium on planned labor inspections of businesses, introduced for the period until 2030.

The list of indicators that may indicate a violation of the labor rights of Russians may be expanded again, follows from the draft departmental act posted by the Ministry of Labor on the regulation.gov.ru portal.

The current list was approved by department order two years ago, and then expanded in March of this year. Now it contains four points describing situations in the organization, in the event of which Rostrud may decide to conduct and select the type of unscheduled control (supervisory) event. This, in particular, is the acceptance by the court of an application to declare bankrupt an employer who employs 50 or more employees, as well as the lack of information from the company in the information system for recording the results of a special assessment of working conditions. As Rostrud explained to Kommersant, risk indicators help labor inspectors act preventively, “identifying violations and restoring labor rights, without waiting for workers’ requests.”

The changes prepared by the Ministry of Labor add two more indicators to the current list. The first will concern identifying signs of wages being paid below the minimum wage by correlating the wage fund and the number of employees in the company. The second indicator will track the absence of personnel changes while reducing contributions to the Social Fund by 50%.

Managing partner of the BLS law firm, Elena Kozhemyakina, explains the expansion of the list by the fact that supervisory authorities “want to look even more carefully at the financial, most sensitive side of any enterprise: salaries, contributions and deductions.” She notes that in the current economic realities, companies are trying to reduce costs by taking advantage of gaps and opportunities in legislation, which supervisors may consider gray schemes.

So far, as Rostrud told Kommersant, the number of requests to labor inspectorates is about a third lower than last year. Taking into account the current shortage of personnel, it is hardly possible to expect a massive increase in violations of the labor rights of workers. At the same time, employers and employees may begin to agree on the payment of gray wages more often if companies are willing to share the savings from this with their employees.

Elena Kozhemyakina believes that the expansion of the list of labor market risk indicators looks like another signal about the possible return of planned labor inspections. Let us remind you that almost all of them were canceled until 2030 in order to relieve companies from additional administrative burden in an unstable economic situation. Previously, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia approached the government with a proposal to return inspections. “It is quite possible that more indicators will be added in the coming months, and in the end the authorities will simply decide to resume scheduled inspections. For companies that are still subject to the moratorium, it’s time to think about it and check if everything is in order. And first, at least go through the checklists for a scheduled inspection. By the way, despite the moratorium, adjustments are also being made to them,” the expert noted.

However, the White House insists that there will be no return to mass scheduled inspections and inspectors will have to learn to develop risk indicators so that they can identify specific violations of mandatory requirements. However, optimization of, for example, social contributions by re-registering employees in service professions as self-employed will be difficult to identify in this way due to the uncertainty of the boundary between formal and flexible employment

Anastasia Manuilova, Oleg Sapozhkov