May 22, 2000

deadline.ru

Lev Levinson

Labor Unions To Be Sidelined by Labor Code: Working Overtime Will Become Our Human Right

[translation for personal use only]

Vladimir Mironov, a former judge of the Moscow City Court, once opened the employment record of one of his visitors. In the record, the inscription "fired" was followed with a variation of the four-letter word. One might guess that the boss got sick enough with his employee to resort to such a verbiage. Nevertheless, in the past, under Soviet-era labor committees, it was hard to imagine any kind of administration doing such things even to a hopeless alcoholic and shirker.

In essense, the government draft of the Labor Code sends a similar message to all workers in the country. At least this is how labor unions are bound to read the draft.

A year ago, there had already been a conflict in the Duma over this project. Then, its discussion was suspended: both branches of power agreed that it wouldn't be prudent to push through such an unpopular bill on the eve of elections. Now, when everybody got elected, the Labor Code is back on the agenda. Its consideration is scheduled for June 7.

There is little need to explain that the present composition of the Duma will not let the government be frustrated in any of its desires. Nevertheless, in the course of his confirmation hearings, Kasyanov responded to a question on Labor Code by saying he was unfamiliar with the issue and hadn't read the document, that he will give appropriate instructions, but that these days the government needs tax bills much, much more.

Formally speaking, there have been three drafts. But only one of them, prepared in the Labor Ministry, has the official status. The authors of the other two - Teimuraz Avaliani, a radical communist, and Anatoly Golov from Yabloko - lost their Duma seats. (...) Just before the hearings on the Prime Minister's confirmation, a fourth alternative draft was introduced in the Duma. The fact that among his authors there are influential communists Anatoly Lukyanov and Valery Saikin, Andrei Isaev (a labor union leader from the Fatherland) and Gasan Mirzoev, chair of the Guild of Attorneys (from the Union of Right-Wing Forces) serves as a guarantee that final decisions will be postponed at least until the fall. Avaliani's and Golov's proposals will still have to be taken into account (unless someone will find some trick in the Duma by-laws), but only this latest draft can provide a real counterweight to the government bill.

The 30-year old Code of Labor Laws (KZoT) is obsolete. Its guarantees are not being observed. The acting laws do not make employees answerable for the fulfillment of their obligations under contract. (...) Many provisions are unconstitutional and at odds with international law. Thus, it is legal to terminate an employee that is temporarily disabled, which is in violation of the ILO Convention. Or, another example, an employee has no right to quit from a fixed-time contract position "without sufficient reasons".

Yet, with all deficiencies of the present law, the document that several governments have been trying to impose upon the country throws it back by about a hundred years. (...) In fact, the government wants to abolish the 8-hour working day limit. Employers will be entitled to "negotiate" even a 12-hour day, and, in case overtime work is done "voluntarily", employees will be paid at a regular rate, without increase. It will be enough to sign a declaration - at the employer's proposal - stating that you request permission to work 56 hours a week instead of 40. What else does the government want? To legalize payments in kind, in medieval style. Then, employers will be able to shift the burden of marketing low-demand products onto the shoulders of their employees.

In the government draft, employers are not answerable for non-payment of wages. Meanwhile, employees can be fired if they decline to work without pay. The bill expands the scope of grounds for firing and reduces limitations on it. This Code would remove the ban on firing pregnant women, mothers of young and disabled children. Employers would become entitled to change labor conditions without warning, while today they are obliged to inform their workers about these changes two months in advance.

The informal argument runs like this: the 8-hour working day limit and many other regulations have not been enforced in practice for many years - everybody does whatever possible to survive. Some are happy to get paid at least in kind. Wouldn't it be better just to legalize the order that emerged over time? Following this logic, the government decided to make at least employers happy. And since the latter don't need unions, it's best to get rid of them at all. The draft code strips them of any influence over management: the boss can take any decisions on his own. Strikingly, the "socially oriented" Yabloko advertising the "pro-employee" Golov draft, does not pay attention to even more far-reaching proposals contained in this project - such as entitling employers to fire workers without explanation if the company's size is less than 30 people. (...)

Same themes can be found in the famous Gref program, which proposes large cuts in unemployment benefits and encourages out-of-court settlements of labor disputes.

The authors of the government bill resort to the principle of equality of negotiating parties, i.e. equality of employees and employers, as a legal basis for the "labor legislation reform". But a pure civil approach is not applicable to labor relations, where one side has a more advantageous position in the first place. The goal of labor laws is just the opposite: to protect employees from the economic supremacy of employers. This requires working legal mechanisms, including Processual Labor Code, which the government promised to introduce back in 1996, but forgot abotut this promise. Meanwhile, its draft Labor Code has already received the IMF approval.

Johnson's Russia List

#4320

23 May 2000

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