Systematicity in Constructing Disciplinary and Material Liability Procedures and the Need to Harmonize them in Russian Labor Legislation

The article addresses the problem of law enforcement in the context of a great number of gaps in the system of procedural legal norms in the Labour Code of the Russian Federation, in particular, among the rules concerning liability of an employee for failure to perform or improper performance of his or her work. Within the branch of Labor Law, types of employee's responsibility are combined in accordance with their labour law nature. For an employee to be held liable a reason common for both material and disciplinary liability is applied, namely, a disciplinary offence, with a few exceptions. However, regardless of theoretical implementation of rules regulating employee's liability to the employer, labor legislation provides for a very vague description of the procedure for holding the employee liable, which causes a lot of law enforcement problems that may seem minor at the first sight, but taken cumulatively they are of primary importance for resolving a partucular dispute. By analysing labour laws, scientific literature and jurisprudence, it is possible to identify a fairly large number of problems arising when the employee is held liable, numerous axiological concepts and procedural mistakes committed by employers. This raises the question of revising existing legislation with a view to unifying, within the framework of one institution, employee's responsibility to the employer and including into it the concepts of a "procedure for bringing an employee to labour law liability" or "procedure for bringing an employee to liability for failure to perform or for improper performance of labor duties" providing a uniform or common procedure for conducting a disciplinary (internal) investigation with developing evidentiary basis (of the case) in writing. A unified procedure for bringing employees to liability in the sphere of labor law relations should be set forth in more than just one or two articles. The Labour Code of the Russian Federation should contain a chapter or a group of rules containing procedural principles and rules that thoroughly regulate the procedure of bringing employees to liability under labor law provisions.

Disciplinary responsibility, material liability, order of bringing to liability, procedure, employee, employer, work duties, harmonization, disciplinary misconduct

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