18.08.2017

The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection is planning to introduce tougher penalties for State business leaders who do not employ disabled people by terminating their employment contracts.

According to Izvestia, such a move will affect around 275,000 Russian State and municipal organisations. Current legislation stipulates that companies must set aside a certain number of employment places (the exact number varies from region to region) for disabled people.

However, not all business leaders are willing to meet these legal requirements. Some put totally inappropriate job vacancies on their websites, others formally register disabled people but none end up being employed. Indeed, there are some employers who are not worried about receiving fines and just pay them as a matter of course.

At present, failure by employers to fulfil their obligations to create or allocate jobs in line with fixed disabled employment quotas, or their refusal to take on a disabled person, only results in administrative fines of between 5,000 and 10,000 roubles for public and private company officials.

Implementation of the Ministry’s initiative will lead to the dismissal of those in breach of existing employment rules. In the view of the Ministry, such a step will improve monitoring of how effectively legislative requirements governing the employment of disabled people are being observed.

These changes are due to come into effect during 2018. Statistics show that, of the more than 3.7 million disabled people of working age in Russia, less than a third are currently in employment.

Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2017/08/18/uvolnenie-rokovoditeli-otkaz-priem-na-rabotu-invalida/