Disciplinary Liability of Employees: Analysis of Acting Legislation and Directions for Its Improvement

Introduction. The dynamic development of labour relationships and implementation of the new forms of employment, such as distant work, taking place in our state at the present stage of its life cycle, stimulate the legislators to constantly improve the legal norms of employee-employer relationship regulation. Thus, in the last two years, the legal norms regulating labour of the certain categories of employees, the issues of documenting labour relationships, managing and arranging payment for mentors, etc. have been significantly updated. At the same time, one of the important institutions of labour law – labour discipline, and in particular, disciplinary liability of employees – has not been changed for quite a long time. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the norms it is regulated by are perfect and easy to implement in practice. The present research aims to analyse the regulatory framework and take it as the grounds to formulating the directions for improvement of the Russian Federation Labour Code referred to disciplinary liability of employees in analogy to the special laws regulating labour of the certain categories of employees (judges, officers of state, police officers, etc.).

Materials and Methods. The general scientific method, comparative analysis and dogmatic legal approach were used by the author to study the legislation regulating the issues of awarding disciplinary penalties.

Results. Insufficiently well-developed labour discipline regulating provisions in the Labour Code of the Russian Federation cause problems for both parties of labour relationships: employees may be unfairly held disciplinary liable, and employers risk to face the rescission of disciplinary punishment judgment awarded to an employee and subsequent claim for compensation for moral damage (and in the case of dismissal – reimbursement of wages for the period of forced absenteeism). Special laws providing detailed regulation of labour for judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, etc. have been analysed, and amendments to the acting legal norms have been proposed in their analogy, i.e.: establishing a clear algorithm for an employer to award a disciplinary penalty; determining at the statutory level the type of liability corresponding to the certain disciplinary offense. It is proposed to provide a juridical definition of a concept of “improper performance of labour duties” to exclude the discriminatory interpretation by an employer.

Discussion and Conclusion. Based on the provided examples of precise regulation of disciplinary liability of the certain categories of employees, the trends for improvement of the Russian Federation legislation have been outlined. Further research is needed to formulate the general norms on application of the employee liability in such a way that would ensure employee the efficient protection from labour discrimination, and employer – possibility to apply the above mentioned penalties in accordance with the precise and understandable procedures saved from subsequent litigation.

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