Application of the collective agreement of a transnational corporation in the territory of the Eurasian Economic Union

The main aim of the study is to identify the problems of transnational application of social partnerships of vertically integrated companies incorporated in the jurisdiction of Russia and working in other countries that are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as to find ways of their possible solution. Large-scale vertically integrated transnational corporations enter into collective bargaining with trade unions representing persons who work for holding organizations. The result is that non-standard acts of social partnership such as general or standard form collective contracts are emerging. Such acts of social partnership are not expressly regulated by the labor legislation of Russia, as well as of other countries of the EAEU. Their existence is based on the principle "what is not forbidden is allowed". Violation of the employees' labor rights enshrined in the collective agreement of a vertically integrated holding can cause problems, if the collective agreement was adopted according to the rules established in the labor legislation of one country, and the employee seeks its execution on foreign territories with current specific social partnership legislation, where the affiliated company operates. The lack of conflict-of-laws rules in the national labor legislation and the social partnership legal regulation distinctions in the Eurasian Economic Union countries are the reason for challenging workers' labor rights protection conferred by collective bargaining agreement. The author studied vast normative and theoretical material, analyzed the norms of the labor codes of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic, as well as acts of social partnership of vertically integrated companies established in Russia. The general corporation of Gazprom, a large global company, was analyzed more completely. The company implements an open and transparent social and personnel policy. System and complex analysis of normative legal acts, expert assessments and a comparative-legal (comparative) method were applied in this study, which made it possible to identify similar and distinctive features of the legal regulation of social partnership in the labor legislation of the EAEU countries. The lack of sufficient conflict-of-laws rules in the national labor law systems, differences in the legal regulation of social partnership in the EAEU countries were mentioned as part of the study. This can make it difficult to protect the labor rights of workers provided by the collective agreement of a transnational holding company. Consequently, the general and specific (national) problems of the labor legislation of the EAEU countries, which could become an obstacle to expanding the practice of transboundary application of collective agreements of transnational companies, were identified. Conceptual proposals on harmonization of the labor legislation of the EAEU countries in the reviewed area were also formulated.

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