Teleworking and labor conditions in Russia

IUSLabor. 2017. No. 2. P. 52–58.

Daria Chernyaeva

The concept of telework itself is new to the Russian legal system, but the ideas of remote work and homeworking both have long history in Russia. A provision on homeworking was first introduced to the Code of Laws on Labour in 1922 (then this category of workers was called “kvartirniki” – “apartmenters”, i.e. people working in their apartments) and remain in all codes including the current one (Chapter 49). The Code of 1922 ordered the Council of People’s Commissars to enact a special decree on people working at home which was done in 1922 and then in 1928. It was further developed in the Code of 1971 and then in the Regulation on Working Conditions of Home Workers which State Committee on Labour (Goskomtrud) enacted in 1981 and which remained in force till the end of 2016 when the Ministry of Labour recognized many old regulations as inoperative or stale.

There is no regular and/or official statistical data on teleworkers. There are only scattered sociological studies that embrace 1-2 years and small groups of respondents (100-200) living in particular regions of the Russian Federation, and the labour conditions either were not the main focus of the study or were not analyzed at all. These studies can hardly be regarded as representative for the entire situation in the country in this sense.

Ключевые слова: Russia, telework, телеработа, remote work, working conditions, дистанционная работа, teleworker