Trade unions asked Mishustin to lift the moratorium on business inspections

Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) Mikhail Shmakov wrote a letter to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin asking him to lift the moratorium on business inspections, according to the website organizations. According to Mr. Shmakov, the introduction of the moratorium limited the action of the federal labor inspectorate, as a result of which the protection of labor rights and freedoms of citizens became difficult.

According to Mikhail Shmakov, the moratorium assumes that all scheduled inspections of the federal labor inspectorate were canceled, and unscheduled inspections became possible only with the agreement of the prosecutor’s office and “only in limited cases.” He notes that the Labor Code does not distinguish the rights of citizens into those that “are subject to protection through supervision of compliance with labor legislation, and those that can be protected only in special cases.”

Mr. Shmakov explained that the moratorium negatively affects, first of all, the identification of such violations as the substitution of labor relations with civil law ones. According to him, now such violations are detected only during tax control, since the activities of the federal labor inspectorate are difficult.

Mikhail Shmakov’s letter to Mikhail Mishustin contains three demands:

• ensure compliance with the International Labor Organization Convention No. 81 “On Labor Inspection in Industry and Commerce”;
• cancel the moratorium on business inspections introduced by government decree No. 336;
• remove federal state control over compliance with labor legislation from the law on state and municipal control.

Since March 2022, a decree signed by Mikhail Mishustin has been in force, according to which unscheduled inspections at enterprises will be carried out only on instructions from the president, the government and the requirements of the prosecutor’s office. According to the document, scheduled inspections can only be carried out at facilities with high categories of risk of harm.

In December of the same year, when the moratorium was extended until 2023, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko stated, that the government must fight the “test itch.” According to her, it is necessary to reduce the administrative burden on business, since inspectors force institutions to deal with “paperwork”, which prevents them from carrying out their core activities.

Polina Motyzlevskaya