The Economically Dependent Self-Employed: Differences in National Approaches to the Determination of Their Legal Status

The aim of this research is to identify the most effective mechanisms for countering the practice of "unfair competition" in the labor market with the participation of the self-employed. To achieve the aim, the features of the legal status of the economically dependent self-employed in various modern legal orders are examined. In this research, the author analyzed the regulatory legal acts and court practice of the Russian Federation, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the USA, Sweden, the Republic of South Africa on the regulation of dependent self-employed activities, recognition of civil law labor relations, widespread use of collective contractual regulation and its interaction with competition law. The documents of the International Labor Organization and the European Union, as well as publications of Russian and foreign researchers on the subject of the article were studied. The main methodological approaches in the study were comparative studies, the method of expert assessments, analysis and synthesis, formal legal and functional methods. The author found out that the modern labor market is characterized by an increase in the number of self-employed persons and a decrease in the number of employees. It can therefore be concluded that these processes narrow the scope of labor law, worsen the working conditions and the level of social protection for both self-employed people and employees. Since this problem is acquiring a global character, the article summarizes different national approaches to the regulation of the labor of the self-employed, to the determination of their legal status and the possibility of a flexible application of labor law norms to them. The phenomenon of self-employment for modern Russia was actualized. The article demonstrates a traditional labor law method for solving the problems of concealing an employment relationship for an employer to obtain illegal preferences. Different national practices existing in the Russian Federation and in other countries were compared. The author identified signs of economically dependent self-employed persons in different legal orders that separate them from other self-employed and employees. The problems arising from the provision of collective bargaining rights to the self-employed from the standpoint of antitrust legislation were studied. As a result, the general problems and priorities of legal policy in this area have been identified, and the ways in which the national labor market is protected from "social dumping" existing in different countries have been generalized by bringing the status of economically dependent self-employed persons close to that of employees. The conclusion is made about the imperfection of the priorities of the legal policy of the Russian Federation in the field of the regulation of the self-employed. The policy aims at using monetary methods to withdrawing the self-employed "out of the shadow" to the detriment of social protection with the risk of the deterioration of working and employment conditions.

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