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3Information for citation:
Demidov, N. V. (2022) Workplace and Legal Culture of Employees and Employers in Russia: Modern Challenges through the Lens of History. European and Asian Law Review. 5 (2), 14-24. DOI: 10.34076/27821668 2022 5 2 14.
UDC 349.2
BISAC LAW054000
DOI: 10.34076/27821668_2022_5_2_14
Research Article
WORKPLACE AND LEGAL CULTURE OF EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYERS IN RUSSIA: MODERN CHALLENGES THROUGH THE LENS OF HISTORY
NIKOLAY V. DEMIDOV
Tomsk State University ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6716-8591
The work is aimed at examining the issues related to the impact of the industry-specific workplace and legal culture on enforcing labor law standards in Russia. The focus is on historical continuity of national legal culture phenomena and its negative aspects that hinder enforcement of labor law standards in practice. The research was conducted with a comparative-historical diachronic approach using sociological method tools within the general framework of an anthropological approach. Based on the results of the research, the structural elements of the industry-specific legal culture were identified, its manifestations for employees and employers as labor market key players were described. The essence of each element is described as well. Parallels are drawn between the status of legal consciousness and legal literacy in the context of free employment in the age of factory-and-plant legislation and nowadays. The concept of historical consistency, implicitness of some workplace culture factors that have been distorting enforcement of labor legislation for more than two hundred centuries is presented. The major factors include low legal literacy of employees and employers, disregard for legal provisions, the penchant of Russian citizens for non-legal regulators of employment relations, inflated paternalistic expectations, legal indifferentism by employment contract parties, social alienation of employees and employers, and employee's refusal to defend their labor rights in case of violation. It is concluded that existing defects of legal consciousness and legal illiteracy need to be taken into account in normsetting work in order to avoid the issue of the poor effectiveness of labor law standards in Russia.
Key words: history of labor law, factory-and-plant legislation, enforcement of labor law standards, legal consciousness, workplace culture, anthropology of law
Introduction
Over the course of all three periods of labor law history in Russia, a stable area of relations has existed - execution of workplace and legal provisions in practice. In the context of radical legislative changes, the enforcement of labor law standards was associated with the same patterns and identical challenges. Thus, it is actually not only legislation that presets labor relations. They are significantly transformed under the influence of informal civilization factors that exist on the level of cognitive activities such as legal literacy and legal consciousness. This can be largely attributed to the legal culture for employees and employers that has been almost the same throughout history. Methodologically, this gives the grounds to apply tools inherent to the anthropological approach to labor law and examine labor law standards' dependency on beliefs, values, stereotypes, and traditions of labor relationship participants.
Copyright© 2022. The Authors. Published by Ural State Law University named after V. F. Yakovlev. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0. license http:llcreativecommons.orglllicenselby-ncl4.0I
Anthropological phenomena are historically consistent, mostly objective and driven by economical, biological, ethological, and geographical factors. These grounds allow analysis of the phenomena of workplace and legal culture in terms of history and drawing parallels with the states of minds in the age of factory-and-plant legislation of the Russian Empire in the 19th century and in the first quarter of the 21st century.
It is noteworthy that the status of the industry-specific workplace and legal culture has never been studied with a comparative-historical approach by Russian scholars. Numerous reports that establish the information background can be found in sources of the 19th and 20th centuries. These include memoirs and reports of the first factory inspectors of the Russian Empire, individual legal acts, texts of contracts, pieces of journalism, essays by politicians and economists, works of Soviet and modern researchers who specialize in labor law. The existing body of data allows establishment of quite substantial patterns regarding levels of workplace and legal culture in the previous ages and their comparison with the state of affairs in Russia in the first quarter of the 21st century. However, there is no scientific research summarizing previous experience, which poses a unique academic challenge. It is also of certain interest, since evolutionarily, the modern difficulties of labor legislation enforcement go back to the two-century long history of behavior patterns and cognitive experience of employees and employers. World perception, attitude towards the law, values, convictions, and stereotypes are hereditary even in the context of radical changes in political regimes, and, therefore, they deserve academic focus.
Materials and Methods
This research was conducted with a comparative-historical diachronic approach using sociological method tools within the general framework of an anthropological approach.
Results
The results of the research are presented in the Conclusion.
Discussion
Destructiveness of the Employers' Legal Consciousness: the General Place of History of Russian Labor Law
Evasion of law by employers has become a historical constant in enforcement of Russian labor law standards since the age of factory-and-plant legislation. I. I. Yanzhul, one of Russia's first Factory Inspectors, described manifestations of this phenomenon in the early 20th century, but he mostly provided a universal characterization for all historical periods of Russia: 'The second aspect of my first impressions is complete indifference by industrialists toward the Law of June 1 (the Law of June 1, 1882, 'On Employment of Child Workers at Factories'. - N. D.) and its prospects: they seemed to doubt if it was possible to be put into practice or maybe they were just used to seeing laws unexecuted. Moreover, some of them even joked about putting the law and control measures into effect and did not hesitate to point out some tricks that would allow avoiding the law even under sufficient control. Some industrialists or their representatives expressed their strong conviction, however unclear its grounds were, that the initiative would never be completed, that the government would cancel the law before it came into effect (which - alas! - turned out to be true later)' (Yanzhul, 1907: 35).
Works by factory inspectors written on the cusp of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as A. A. Mikulin, S. Gvozdyov, I. I. Yanzhul, P. A. Peskov, A. N. Bykov, are full of facts regarding offenses. It is not difficult to recognize today's practices in the following descriptions:
'A worker who had reported to the inspector and confirmed his complaint in the factory's office... could expect to last only to the end of the employment period at best, but in most cases they had to be ready for dismissal'(Mikulin, 1893: 77).
'N. Vinogradov, a factory inspector of the Vladimir Governorate, during his visit to Kolchugin's brass and copper-rolling mills on June 24, 1909, discovered that supervisors of mills did not specify workers' qualification in their pay books, which allowed them to ignore Art. 95 and 96 of the Industry Charter by recategorizing highly qualified employees as unskilled laborers' (Kruze, 1980: 16).
'It is fair to say that there is a place for abuse by the powerful ones who blatantly do not care about rank and payment at the factories' (Plevako, 1993: 525).
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Employers had a particular affinity for making their workers pay fines. As one of income sources for entrepreneurs, fines were imposed both for property damage and for disciplinary offences, though quite often - without any legitimate grounds. The fines bore no relation to the salary, had a poor association with the offense severity and were imposed selectively and randomly. According to A. A. Mikulin, 'Before the Law was adopted, the inequity at some factories reached an incredible scale when it came to fine imposition. We know the industrialists that integrated increased fine imposition straight into the system of factory operations, so their key measure for the accomplishments of senior workers - factory supervisors, foremen, quality checkers, etc. - was the size of the fines imposed by them on common workers. These senior workers could incur significant displeasure of the industrialist or even could get fired if the number of fines from workers was reduced' (Mikulin, 1905: 83).
Such an approach thrived in the times when Art. 107 of the Factory and Plant Industry Charter provided for only two grounds for fines: unauthorized leaves and causing damage to the employer. As I. I. Yanzhul concluded, 'there seems to be no boundaries for various reasons to impose fines at the factory' (Yanzhul, 1888: 82).
Aside from the fines, deductions and withholdings of all kinds were used in prerevolutionary Russia. Thus, arbitrary quitting (dismissal) from the factory could result in: a deduction in payment for the period of 6 days to a month and a half; deduction of 1-2 rubles for every day worked at the factory over the previous month, or deduction of 20 % of lost earnings as a forfeit (Yanzhul, 1884: 77-78).
Quite a valid analogy with the way employers of the early 21st century-imposed fines on their workers can be drawn here. In the context of an absolute prohibition on fining, in fact monetary sanctions are used most widely. For instance, based on the results of a survey conducted among Russian employers, 44 % of them impose fines on their workers, and 9 % of employees lose almost a third of their monthly wages1. It is pointed out that fining has started to be used particularly intensively in Russia during the pandemic, i.e., since spring 2020. In 2018, 26 % of workers said that their employers-imposed fines on employees, and in 2021 this figure reached 38 %. In most cases, fines are imposed for gross violations of labor discipline (unauthorized absence, appearing at work under the influence of alcohol, etc.), for poor-quality work and a failure to meet the delivery date. The top five most popular grounds include being late to work and nonfulfillment of a plan2. Indirectly, the practice of imposing sanctions on incentive pay is also supported by the Russian justice system that allows employers to cancel the bonus payments that have been paid for a long time3.
The 21st century is by no means the time when the problem of substitution of civil law for labor contracts emerged, the chance for the employer to cite the most convenient legislation. Thus, in 1874, the Senate ruled in a case over a death of a worker in a collapsed building, rejecting the employer's references to inapplicability of the Hiring Rule of 1861 because there was a civil law contract4. A. A. Mikulin mentioned quite a modern scheme for substituting labor relations with a type of workforce outsourcing: 'I met some industrialists who refused to give the pay books to some workers, because, as they explained, the work had already been delivered by the contractor to some individual who now in their turn was supposed to hire workers and pay them'. In order to prevent parading such an excuse to evade the law (which had been noticed by the Factory Inspection multiple times) the following explanation was provided: 'The term 'contractors' should be applied only to those with whom the factory management has entered an agreement (contract) in writing, or those that have a trade or shop license. Then all the responsibility for illegal actions towards workers and existing authorizations fall upon the contractor as an independent industrialist' (Mikulin, 1893: 30-31). Soviet researcher E. E. Kruze also wrote about substituting labor by civil relations through drawing up contractor and subcontractor agreements (Kruze, 1980: 16).
Some actions of 19th century employers can be classified as deliberate opposition to requirements of law, which is not uncommon nowadays as well. Low legal literacy and destructions of legal
1 Rudich, K. (2021) Fines Cannot Be Imposed until They Can. When Employers Can Punish Their Employees with the Ruble. Available at: https://secretmag.ru/practice/shtrafovat-nelzya-no-mozhno-za-chto-rabotodatel-imeet-pravo-nakazat-sotrudnika-rublyom.htm [Accessed: 22 March 2022].
2 Fedotova, E., Petrova, Yu. & Kozlov, A. (2021) What Employers Fine Their Workers for Today. Available at: https://www.vedomosti.ru/management/articles/2021/08/10/881599-rabotodateli-shtrafuyut [Accessed: 22 March 2022].
3 Appellate Decision of the Moscow City Court No. 33-31476/2020 of September 24, 2020, regarding Civil Case No. 33-31476/2020.
4 Contractual Law on Decisions of the Civil Cassation Department of the Governing Senate. (1874) Vladimir, Governorate Management.
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consciousness make these actions possible. A. A. Mikulin described it as follows: 'the industrialists who unfortunately constituted the majority and gave our Inspection most of the cases to work on were large and medium manufacturers that treated the law with open hostility and did not intend to agree with any of its main provisions'. They demanded to be given complete freedom regarding the conditions they offered when hiring their workers - just like it had been before. Those industrialists often sent specifically invited jurors, attorneys and lawyers to the Inspection, so that they tried to defend the requirements of their clients - each based on some article of law' (Mikulin, 1893: 58). 'Although all the possible measures had been taken to ensure the industrialists' familiarization with the requirements of the law (samples of pay books, rules, time sheets, and the books that were to be maintained had been sent), despite all those efforts, during the very first visits there were only a very few isolated instances when more or less proper compliance with all the legal requirements could be found' (Mikulin, 1893: 65).
The following characteristic also seems extremely relevant for our days: 'having rushed to fulfill all the formal requirements they needed to, the industrialists immediately started looking for ways to bypass the law and to continue running their businesses on the same bases that had now become illegal, but covering them from the outsiders with exact execution of everything the law required' (Mikulin, 1893: 66-67).
Driven by their aspiration for wealth accumulation, entrepreneurs not only invented ways to evade the law, but also shared relevant experience turning it into massive business practices.
Unlawful Nature of Hiring
It's a tacit pattern of relations between an employer and an employee outside legislation that has become a key reason for challenges in enforcing factory legislation and - partly - even modern labor law. Per calculations of Rosstat (Federal State Statistics Service), in 2019, the share of unofficially employed people reached 21.3 % (15.25 million people)5. The size of the informal workforce increases steadily in the dynamics of 2010-20206. It results in precarious labor relations in Russia, cutting millions of workers out of the scope of labor law standards, destabilization and dehumanization of social life, erosion of legal consciousness, and damage to the national economy. Similar unlawful labor relations thrived in Russia in the age of Alexander III and Nicholas II, when factory legislation had already been formalized. It was religious and ethical norms that served as the main social regulator at the time instead of legal regulators.
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian state and society were both in transition from the age of feudalistic agriculture to industrialization. It was this era when the moral imperatives had already lost their previous effectiveness and no longer served as a guide for entrepreneurs striving for profit. Replacement of the previous feudalistic state of mind with a new way of thinking required a long period of time. In the meanwhile, the worldview turned toward legal nihilism that originated from Middle-Age hiring relations. In the 18th century, it continued as a matter of tradition and seemed rather like the rule than the exception. A. S. Lappo-Danilevsky described the middle of the 18th century as follows: 'individuals whose work was used by large entrepreneurs could look for defense against abuse in the court, of course, but judicial procedures of the time tended to take an extremely long time' (Lappo-Danilevsky, 1899: 85). Then, an appeal by industrialist A. Dryablov, submitted to the Senate in 1747 was described as a way to delay execution of a judgment in the labor dispute he had lost. Appealing took 21 years and resulted in death and ruin of workers.
During the 18th century, hired workers were brought to ruin by unpaid wages, punished corporally for requests and complains, involved in forced overtime work and were subject to unmotivated prohibitions (to sing, talk or tend gardens). They were deprived of correctly drawn documents, included in 'black lists', and they suffered from payment delays. Undoubtedly, today's state of affairs is far from such large-scale and gross violations. However, the consumer perception of workers is also inherent to Russian entrepreneurs of our days to some measure. L. S. Tal in his work Essays on Industrial Labor Law established this model of relations from the Middle-Age cottage industry: 'Both the state and the society were completely indifferent about the way the master of the house treated them as long as he didn't violate accepted obligations or criminal laws' (Tal, 1918: 3-4). In the late 19th century, inspector I. I. Yanzhul found the following standard/principle in the rules of one factory: 'The owner of the factory is a master
5 Galcheva, A. (2019) Rosstat Announced Growth in Informal Employment in Russia. Available at: https://www.rbc.ru/ec onomics/05/09/2019/5d6e74fb9a794709eeba4f8c [Accessed: 22 March 2022].
6 Workforce, Employment and Unemployment in Russia (based on results of sampling surveys of the workforce) (2020). Statistics Digest. Moscow, Rosstat.
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and policymaker with unlimited power who is not constrained by any laws, and he often use these laws at his will; the workers owe him absolute obedience' (Yanzhul, 1884: 83). To increase their own uncontrolled power, entrepreneurs openly formalized the ban on judicial recourse in the local acts, thus withdrawing any disputes on labor relations from the competence of the court (Yanzhul, 1884: 84).
Among other things, such a 'consumer approach' of employers was demonstrated by such a phenomenon as extending labor hiring at the merchant's will. Thus, contracts were entered into with stevedores, according to which the contractor was supposed 'to take work for us and enter into written or verbal agreements with the employers not with our consent, but at his own discretion. We, in turn, have to work in absolute obedience without asking for a raise in salary or for contract changes. ...We, the workers, are obliged to always be sober, honest, polite, neat and at least 22 years old' (Kanel, 1906: 48-49).
S. V. Pakhman, a researcher and civil law specialist of the Court Reform age, came to the following conclusion regarding civil relations: 'in the field of private civil relations, the vast majority of our population abides by the rules established through conventions and mostly inconsistent with the legislative principles, rather than the statute law' (Pakhman, 1877: VII). In fact, it should be noted that legal nihilism established over the course of centuries was the main quality of Russian employees and employers by and large. Implicit principles of the culture could not be overcome in the Soviet era, and they manifested themselves in the restoration of capitalism in Russia.
At the cusp of the 19th-20th centuries, the issue of legal nihilism was caused by economic developments associated with the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. The previous ways to regulate labor relations were undermined, and the lack of effective legal regulation resulted in large-scale abuse among the employers. The times of the Soviet breakup became a similar phase of profound transformation for the social and economic paradigms. The previous model of patronage labor relations ceased to exist in the early 1990s and was replaced with contract freedom in its extreme. The 2000s became the period when legitimacy was partially restored in the area of labor relations. However, even today, it has turned out to be impossible to achieve unconditional execution of workplace and legal provisions, primarily due to legal consciousness defects such as legal nihilism and indifferentism of employees and employers.
Paternalistic Expectations of Employees and Employers
The age of factory law and today's labor law share an interesting phenomenon: both employees and employers expect some kind of care from the state. Thus, in the worldview of a pre-revolutionary Russian worker, employer or official, the role of statist principles was important. Similar phenomena can be found today as well. In such a model, the state is considered the main regulatory entity. Thereby, local regulations and social partnership acts are not developed properly and cannot close the gaps in federal norm creation. Authoritative paternalism in labor relations regulation has been established over the centuries of a monarchy and then under the patronage of the Soviet state and Communist Party. S. V. Ruzin explains the focus of pre-revolutionary employees and employers on the government's will in the field of labor by 'exaggerated ideas about the role of the state authority' and 'a lack of constitutional political and legal tradition'(Ruzin, 2012: 11). Similar behavior was typical for Soviet workers, and it's largely justified today as well. The dominance of the political will in regulating labor relations results in legal regulation gaps that are difficult to overcome. With a lack of detailed federal-level instructions, the place of missing standards is taken by spontaneous practices. In turn, they are defined by the interests of employers as the economically and institutionally stronger party in the labor relations.
Meanwhile, the thought first voiced in the early 20th century is still obvious: 'We see that the old idea that it's not horses, but harness straps that carry the cart; that it's not people, but those establishments existing in the country that create the human way of life. External mechanical superstructures are expected to change the essence of the people's life, but, alas, it's not them it depends on... Despite the significance of the government and courts, their influence is hardly deep enough to reach the most organic bases of the people's existence, the fundamentals of its material and spiritual being, which is a prerequisite to mitigate the coarseness of common people's lives and to eliminate tensions between interests of certain individuals. Anyway, all these are just more or less mechanical superstructures in human lives' (Gurko, 1909).
Nevertheless, despite the lack of central authorities' attention to the social and labor relations, employees and employers were waiting for the will of the government to be expressed at the end of the 19th century, just like they do in the first quarter of the 21st. Independent establishment of mutual behavior rights raises
concerns regarding the correctness of the formalized standards, scares with the efforts it requires, with unclear rules and easy availability of illegal practices. Therefore, as long as there is no expression of government will and effective central oversight, the employer assigned by the economic leadership builds its own 'low-level' structures for labor.
Legal Indifferentism of Employees and Employers
The combination of government dominance in regulating labor relations and its discrepancies with the life of the society has historically led to non-compliance with the labor law standards. The combination of state administrativism 'from the top' and non-legal regulation of everyday relations between employees and employers has emerged and taken root. Aside from the traditional national model of thinking, indifference toward existing legal instructions was driven by two factors: both employees and employers followed objective economic interests, and the government supervision was weak. In all times, including the era of the Russian Empire, labor law standards were destined to resist the economic benefit factor of the employer as, in some measure, of the actual employee. In view of this circumstance, the industry would hardly ever achieve absolute efficiency. However, significant alienation of a legal provision from its addressees - employees and employers - was and is common for enforcement of labor regulations in Russia. Pursuing their own goals in the labor market, they preferred to enter into private extralegal agreements. Just like today, it has always been not massive violations as such that were the key feature, but employees' and employers' virtual tacit agreement with them. In the context of significant life burdens 'by right', immediate pragmatic goals proved to be above following formal rules as expected.
It is fair to say that the pattern of national labor legal consciousness has been consistently ambivalent for at least two hundred years. On the one hand, it is based on superiority of centralized over decentralized standards, but, on the other hand - allowability of deviation from implementing them. The emancipation of 1861, just like the USSR abolishment, enabled introduction of economic instead of the previous administrative coercion. Driven by considerations of benefit and sometimes even survival, labor relations deprived of government supervision developed predictably outside legal regulation in both eras.
Entrepreneurs' indifference to the law was noted by Ya. T. Mikhailovsky, Chief Factory Inspector of the country, in the late 19th century: 'generally, personal attitudes of industrialists to Factory Inspection officials could hardly be considered hostile. Owners of industrial enterprises treated the inspectors with proper respect, gave them an opportunity to collect all the necessary data about the establishment and provided with the means to check those data. They expressed their willingness to abide by the requirements of the law, though such willingness was not always transformed into deeds, at least at first' (Mikhailovsky, 1886: 75).
Social Alienation of Employees and Employers
It is a conventional difficulty of the dialogue between an employee and an employer that constitutes a pattern to explain many contradictions associated with execution of labor law standards. Class differences and disparate interests caused isolation of two strata at all stages of the industry's existence. Since the Middle Ages, provision of work had been considered a good deed in the spirit of Roman clientele. In the 15th-17th centuries, the master's power was a combination of patriarchal family patronage, Christian pastoral care, feudalistic personal service and estate patronage. Moral, legal, property and class status inequality emerged. It originated from the provisions of the Charter on the Rights and Benefits for the Towns of the Russian Empire issued by Catherine II (1785). Clauses 49 and 50 of the Charter established the following: 'Each craftsman has the right to be a master in his house for both his apprentices and students, and all the other members of his household; as long as the rights of the city and government are not violated. The craftsman must treat his apprentice and students in a fair and gentle manner. The apprentice and students must be loyal, obedient and respectful towards their master and his family'. Such an organizational model turned out to be a legacy of the post-reform industrial Russia received in the second half of the 19th - early 20th century. In this context, T. S. Morozov's reaction to the lost case about the strike of 1885 was not accidental: the industrialist suffered a stroke and died three and a half years later. Numerous ideologists of capitalistic freedom ascribed the lack of a labor issue in the country to the tradition of protective and trust-based relations of the hiring parties7. To a certain degree, this way of world perception is typical for the modern Russian employers as well.
7 Russia's Revival Union (Progressive National Party): I. Program. II. Charter. (1906) Saint Petersburg, the School for the Deaf and Dumb.
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Workers' Refusal to Defend Labor Rights
In all times, efficient execution of labor law standards has been prevented by the employees' passive attitude towards protecting their violated labor rights. This rather modern phenomenon was also typical for pre-revolutionary attitudes towards labor. There were different grounds for abandoning the attempt to take legal actions or to contact regulatory authorities. One of the most frequent occurrences was the risk of losing a job, if there even was one. The confidential documents sent to I. V. Lutkovsky, the Governor of St. Petersburg, by the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery in 1876 stated: 'Some strong feelings can be noticed between workers of the Hubbard & Co. (Maxwell's) textile and cotton factories because of master Maxwell who has built a house for the workers next to the factory and now makes them absolutely live there. According to the workers, the apartments in the house are very uncomfortable, damp and at the same time expensive, so the workers reluctantly move in, but Maxwell apparently had nothing to do with this previously; those dissatisfied with his apartments and, therefore, refusing to live there, lose their jobs or have to pay him 2 rubles 25 kopecks per month, so the workers pay him for the empty apartment and for the one they live in. However, no matter how burdensome this rule is, no matter how tangible the tax is for them, they obey or they would lose their jobs'8.
There's a well-known quote of A. A. Mikulin that describes the workers' concerns even in case the factory is visited by an inspector: 'In most cases, nothing could be heard from the workers during questioning, aside from their assurances that everything is done absolutely correctly, even when it is known in advance that there are abuses at the factory, and, even if some of us managed to extract mentions of any irregularities and violations from the workers, it was only through hints and indirect questions. This fact is extremely clear evidence of the true nature of that seeming freedom and equality that existed in the contract and relations between industrialists and workers. The worker who had reported to the inspector and confirmed his complaint in the factory's office, thus made his further stay at the factory impossible and could expect to last only to the end of the employment period at best, but in most cases they had to be ready for dismissal, though without any grounds' (Mikulin, 1893: 68).
A. N. Bykov noted some ambiguity in the Australian workers' position that made them passive about defending their right: 'law violations are sometimes enabled by the weakest workers: afraid of being fired for ineptitude, they work for payment below the set rate, but give testimony about getting the established salary' (Bykov, 1909: 56). Undoubtedly, a similar refusal of the Russian workers to seek protection of their labor rights was motivated by forced circumstances.
A note can be found in the collection of reports accumulated by factory inspectors in 1909: 'according to the Senior Factory Inspector of the Governorate of Estonia, there's a manufactory that raises a lot of criticism due to its established practice of firing not only those responsible for their faults, but their relatives as well. The same measure is used if the manufactory is involved in legal proceedings because of some worker's family member'9.
A. K. Klepikov (pseudonym 'S. Gvozdev'), a factory inspector of the early 20th century, emphasized that the goal of the worker's complaint to the factory inspection was not to restore the violated rights, but to receive compensation, i.e., to benefit by chance rather than achieve stable order. 'It is such a painful feeling to see so clearly that the worker's complaint, even if crudely expressed, about the abuses he has suffered for a long time now seems absolutely random; that after breaking away from the industrialist, now he will still continue to hold his tongue and allow violation of his rights quietly' (Gvozdev, 1911: 239-240).
Nowadays, according to the materials of the Russian Monitoring of the Economic State and Health of the Population of RLMS-HSE, in 2019, 26 % of the formally employed workers did not have holidays. The level of expected loss of work in the field of legal labor amounted to 64 %, and that of the informally employed workers reached 66 %10.
Payment delays are quite typical for modern-day Russia, and they never encounter resistance by the employees. An example is violations found during construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome. In 2015, the number of victimized workers reached 2,626 for one of cases, and the sum of debts exceeded 150 mln.
8 Establishment of Revolutionary Traditions of the Petersburg Proletariat. The Post-Reform Period. 1861-1883. (1987) Leningrad, Lenizdat.
9 Collection of Reports Accumulated by Factory Inspectors in 1909. (1910) Saint Petersburg, V. F. Kirshbaum.
10 Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of HSE. (2019) Available at: https://rlms-hse.cpc.unc.edu [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
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rubles11. Another contractor withheld about 19 mln. rubles from 730 workers12. In October 2017, employees of Chief Military Construction Directorate No.6 (previously - Dalspetsstroy Rossii) were ready to protest against non-payments since February of the same year (the sum of debts - 270 million of rubles)13. The ways to protect violated labor rights are remarkable and they hardly correlate with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation: multiple massive hunger-strikes, voluntary dismissals as a sign of protest, picketing of buildings where the executive branch authorities reside, an appeal to the President of the Russian Federation during the television question-and-answer session in 2016. The duration of payment delays was 2-8 months depending on the cases.
According to the sociological survey of Rabota.ru, 75 % of 5,000 respondents encountered unpaid salaries. Meanwhile, only 14 % of the victimized individuals appealed to public authorities and 10 % of them ceased to fulfill their job duties14. Here is a pattern that goes beyond historical boundaries and can be attributed to the multi-million social group's way of thinking.
Legal Illiteracy of Employees and Employers
The fundamental legal illiteracy of Russian citizens should be mentioned as a pattern of executing labor law standards in everyday life.
A. K. Klepikov's phrase is applicable to all the periods of Russian labor law development: 'First of all, I should acknowledge that our workers have an extremely underdeveloped sense of legitimacy. It would be strange to expect otherwise' (Gvozdev, 1911: 108). He also said: 'There is only one thing to describe the workers in general, and this is their ignorance, their deep, almost pervasive blindness' (Gvozdev, 1911: 2).
V. I. Lenin's opinion about the reasons for the proletariat's legal illiteracy in the Russian Empire is valid: 'In fact, there is no time or mentor for a worker who is taken to the factory from a young age, having barely learnt the basics of how to read and write (and many of them can't learn at all!), to get any ideas about laws, and, probably, there is no need' (Lenin, 1967: 278). His words can also be found in one of published papers: 'The laws are unknown to the worker' (Lenin, 1959: 112).
Legal non-enlightenment was based on simple illiteracy of most workers. According to modern sociology, at the cusp of the 19th-20th century 73 % of the entire country's population were illiterate in the literal sense. This indicator reached 85 % among the peasants (Petrov, 2000: 114). The industry's position was slightly better in the major centers: 70.26 % of child workers of the Petersburg Factory District knew how to read and write. In other districts, knowing how to read and to write was the general rule (Mikhailovsky, 1886: 89).
According to a contemporary of 1877: 'The lack of education among our working class and even more so for the rural population, their almost general illiteracy are well-known. To reproach our people with this would be a contradiction to the historical facts that influenced their life process. We could see that they always lived under a strong pressure of the exploitative serf-hood fighting for their very physical existence as hard as they could - oblivion, far from the educated classes of society and from any educational and creative influence. People's customs and morals constituted a characteristic paradigm of sorts that wasn't influenced by any educational elements. Thus, the Russian people fell behind the pace of any cultural progress due to their traditional relations' (Lukashevich, 1887: 48). P. B. Axelrod, a leader of the Mensheviks and ideologist, described the period of the 1870s as follows: 'The general intelligence level of the Russian workers was extremely low, only a small number of them knew how to read and write' (Axelrod, 1907: 16).
I. I. Yanzhul wrote about a similar period of the 1880s: 'At the vast majority of factories we visited, I was mostly shocked (by the way, for quite a long time - at least for two years) with extreme ignorance and unawareness of the government's intentions regarding the potential intervention in the factories' operations, or about the factory laws that had already been issued' (Yanzhul, 1884: 33). K. A. Pazhitnov spoke in
11 The Federal Service for Labor and Employment (Rostrud) discovered salaries payable for the sum of 150 mln. rubles. (2015) Available at: https://rostrud.gov.ru/press_center/novosti/292784/ [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
12 Telekhov, M. (2016) The Court Sentenced Contractor of Vostochny Cosmodrome to Fine for Pay Delays. Available at: http://rapsinews.ru/judicial_news/20160808/276625369.html [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
13 Builders of the Vostochny Cosmodrome Launched a Hunger Strike because of Salaries Payable (2017) Available at: https://lenta.ru/news/2017/10/13/vostochnyi_golodovka/ [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
14 More than 75 % of Russians Experienced Pay Delays. (2021) Availabalbe at: https://www.rbc.ru/society/10/03/2021/ 60476c189a7947566073437c [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
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a similar vein: 'There is no question that foreign capital owners are more civilized than the Russian; though it also cannot be denied that their high level of culture is a result of all the Western attitudes combined' (Pazhitnov, 1908: 266).
V. P. Bezobrazov reported the ignorance of the Russian industrialists: 'All the confusion, hostile attitude and lamenting in the factory world after the introduction of new laws was often caused by simple ignorance of them among the vast majority of people from this world, even after several years after their introduction. That ignorance, which still remains in the factory world to a known extent (mostly among the owners of small-sized establishments) resulted in numerous misunderstandings and violations the industrialists had to pay for. Factory inspectors say all too much regarding this matter in their reports. Aside from describing extreme challenges they encountered in their activity in an abundant and detailed manner, factory inspectors mostly talk about the fact that most factory owners are completely unaware of the new legal provisions' (Bezobrazov, 1888: 16). 'Ignorance, including illiteracy in not only a huge number of our working people, but also the vast majority of the actual owners and administrators at some small-sized enterprises, serve as a massive hindrance not only for application of new laws, but for their understanding as well' (Bezobrazov, 1888: 34-35).
The Legal Literacy of the Russian Citizens Project of 2018 showed that labor rights rank third in the number of violations; 31 % of people estimate the level of their legal knowledge as 'below average'; only 6 % managed to answer correctly five specific legal questions; 34% would like to know more about labor rights15. During the period of 2014-2019, the author of this work conducted tests for employees as well as working students at Tomsk universities. Both legal and other fields of education were covered, including engineering. According to the survey, the indicators of legal enlightenment in terms of labor law were even worse: only 12 % of respondents answered correctly to the questions of the most simple, basic level.
The factor of non-enlightenment and defects in legal consciousness in the field of labor are self-reinforcing, i.e., they mutually stimulate each other. The lack of knowledge in the field of labor law results in disregard for legislative mandates and distrust for the other party of labor relations. Also, a low level of legal consciousness impedes getting actual perceptions about labor law, which, in turn, discourages a positive attitude towards standards of law even further. The consequences include legislation manipulations and direct violations of law by the employer, unpreparedness of workers to protect the violated rights. Despite the external, subjective nature of this issue, it has served as a multiplier that distorts the process of any social and labor relations in all times.
Conclusion
By now, the history of labor law in Russia amounts to at least 140 years, or even about 300 years if the earliest regulatory acts are taken into account. Development of this legislation area has sometimes been subject to drastic changes associated with a change in the political regime, profound modification of economic and social paradigms. At the same time, at various stages of evolution, execution of labor law standards was not devoid of well-known errors. There are manifestations of violations of law by employers and employees, a passive attitude towards defense of violated labor rights, a denial of the potential for social partnership potential and local normative work. It is the state of the legal culture that seems to be the key reason for such a state of affairs both in the 19th century and in the first quarter of the 21st century. Imperfection of the system for execution of labor law standards in the Russian Federation and of the factory-and-plant legislation system in the Russian Empire is caused by a system of factors. The main ones should be mentioned:
- unlawful elements, integration of the 'master-server' structure into the labor relations. The hired were (and sometimes still are) considered favored due to the good will of their employer, like in the times of patron-client relations in Ancient Rome,
- the transitional state of the society and economy both at the cusp of the 19th-20th century and at the cusp of the 20th-21st century. At the end of the 19th century, Russia was transformed from an agricultural to an industrial civilization. At the end of the 20th century, Russia makes a transition from the Soviet administrativist regime of labor force organization to the market agreement-based model. Some
15 Legal Literacy of Russians: on the Way to a Civil Society (2018). Available at: https://amulex.ru/storage/partners_doc/ UA0nJJ6VjTgIGrfgbMyuAr0upkiVMyqEsnjyZPZU.pdf [Accessed: 22 February 2022].
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turning points affect the state of legal consciousness and explain its destructive aspects. A conflict of two models, a transition from the previous to the new paradigm gave birth to the era of early labor law in the form of factory-and-plant legislation with the numerous contradictions of its implementation and now it also affects the labor law of today's Russia,
- a well-known role in reduction of labor law standards effectiveness belongs to the systems of dependency of employees and employers in regulating labor relations. Waiting for imperative orders 'from the top', employers and employees of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation build their own spontaneous practices that are far from legal foundations,
- legal indifferentism of employees and employers. The legal consciousness of Russian workers in the 19th - early 21st centuries, while being extremely underdeveloped, liberally allowed and still allows non-compliance with legal provisions. Disregard for centralized legal rules is conditional upon the fact that both employers and employees respect their own objective economic interests and the weakness of government supervision,
- alienation of employee and employer social groups traditional for Russia, a lack of dialogue and institutions to build it,
- workers' refusal to defend labor rights. Even though the workers had statutory labor rights in the age of the Russian Empire, they never used the opportunities to defend them. Partly because the worker risked encountering response repressions by the employer, partly - because the efforts required to defend the rights were considered burdensome and disproportionate to the expected benefit,
- legal illiteracy of both employees and employers. The concurrent factor was that people were simply illiterate and the vast majority of workers did not know how to read and write. Despite all the efforts of the state to inform labor relationship participants about standards of law, they remained unknown to not only the workers, but representatives of the employer as well.
It seems important to recognize the massive amount of negative factors that are institutionally integrated into the national legal consciousness. This distorting factor should be considered by lawmakers when developing and introducing the innovations of labor law. Otherwise, a phenomenon of weak executability of labor law standards occurs that often devalues even meaningful innovations and creates an 'endless circle' of legal nihilism, indifferentism and ignorance.
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Information about the author
Nikolay V. Demidov - Candidate of Juridical Sciences, Associate Professor of the of Labor Law and Social Welfare Law Department, Tomsk State University (Tomsk, Russia; e-mail: fra_nickolas@ list.ru).
© N. V. Demidov, 2022
Date of Paper Receipt: March 14, 2022
Date of Paper Approval: April 1, 2022
Date of Paper Acceptance for Publishing: June 24, 2022
