Development of rules on an employer-initiated dismissal in Russian factory-plant legislation in the early 20th century

The last quarter of the XIX century witnessed the transition of the Russian factory-plant legislation into a new qualitative condition. The normative legal material was accumulated and new law-enforcement approaches were being tested. There was a social request for the establishment of positive norms about hired labor. In December 1906 a Special Meeting under the direction of D.A.Philosofov was established at the Ministry of Trade and Industry. The reformation of labor legislation resulted in the Charter of Industrial Labor 1913. The editing of norms on dismissal was a remarkable step motivated by the deliberalization of domestic policy. The norm on dismissal for the total unauthorized absence from work without good reason for more than two weeks a month was a new one compared with the provisions of the Law dated 03.06.1886. A worker could be dismissed for unauthorized absence from work for more than two weeks even if he had a good reason. Fines for disciplinary violations (in case they reached the rate determined by law) could serve as additional reasons for dismissal i.e. for the termination of legal relations. The reasons for the above innovations were to be found in the problems Russia experienced both in domestic and foreign policy. It was decided to use the methods for securing social and political stability to overcome them and those people who determined the domestic policy played a significant part in the formation of conservative labor law ideology. During World War I and a revolutionary situation there were social alienation and growth of unrest but it is wrong to evaluate the developed procedure for dismissal unambiguously. The evolution of factory-plant legislation showed the equal extension of rights and duties of both workers and employers. Traditional relations integrated into the sphere of legal regulation, the problem being the inertness of legislators' mentality when eliminating the idea about the supremacy of employers' interests. The conclusion about the appropriate technical and legal qualities of the Charter 1913 is confirmed by an express continuity in connection with earlier Soviet legislation. We can say that a legal institution of dismissal of employees (workers) was formed in the early 20th century. Between 20th-21st centuries the European and Anglo Saxon legal systems of norms about the release of workers were developing in a similar way. The entrenched in 1886 and 1913 systems of factory-plant legislation on dismissal could have become an efficient one in Russia if the system of effective protection of workers' interests was formed. However, the turns of history gave rise to the development of labor legislation in the anomalous for the world practice way.

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