“Could the confidence be legally regulated?” — Tatiana Tereshchenko’s note

The dismissal of an employee due to a loss of confidence, if the Ministry of Labor would decide to come out with such an initiative can only be welcomed.

Russian labor legislation is focused on protecting workers' rights but does not contain answers to actual questions. Many norms are outdated and do not correspond to the needs of the market economy and business dynamics. For example, to dismiss an employee on the initiative of the employer is almost impossible without the liquidation of the organization itself or staff reduction. Other cases related to the lack of certification or commission of an offense by an employee are almost inapplicable in business and require serious time costs.

We are far from commenting on the fact that often legal guarantees have nothing to do with reality but we should recognize: the employer has to entrust the employee with a lot of commercially valuable and insider information, as well as with personal and other data. Usually they talk about the cruelty of employers. The fact that many employees are carelessly performing their duties and not loyal to the organization they work for is left to the brackets. 

Assignment of any kind of information, i.e. an intangible good, do requires trust. It is legally impossible to force to forget or not to use information. It is even more difficult to draw a line between the constitutional guarantee to work and apply in practice abilities to work from the acquired knowledge, which changed the skill level of the employee but at the same time are belonging to the employer as know-how. However, the know-how norms are not developed. Judicial practice is still skeptical towards the agreements on non-competition and confidentiality between employee and employers. Even in spite of the fact that the Federal Antimonopoly Service permits it and does not see a violation of the competition law in such agreements.

To recover something material from the employee is almost impossible because of the limitations of the labor legislation on the conditions and the procedure for the material liability of the employee.

Therefore, the emergence of such grounds for dismissal as a loss of confidence allows employers and employees to openly and consciously build their relationships. The cure for abuse is the awareness and literacy of all stakeholders. Decent legislative initiatives deserve implementation.