Trade Unions and Labour Law in a Modern Russia

The author highlights the actual problems of the trade union movement and labour market changes taking place in a modern Russia, analyzes the evolution of trade unionism through the prism of its history. He rightly believes that it is impossible to carry out such a study without addressing the situation in this field in the U.S.S.R. as many realities of that time continue to exist in an adjusted form now. In terms of centralized state soviet trade unions performed the role of one of the divisions of the mechanism of the government. The appearance of alternative trade unions marked an important shift towards decentralization and liberalization of the labour relations. The peculiarity of a trade union movement in Russia of the second half of the 1990s consists in its high degree of politization. In the event of a rigid confrontation between workers and employers the functions of trade unions on the regional level are often taken by small opposition parties and left groupings. The proclamation of the course aimed at the formation of the market economy in a post-communist Russia has brought the questions on the labour law reform. So another important issue touched by the author concerns the reform of the Russian Labour Code which was adopted in the epoch of socialism and now results no more adequate in light of the drastic social economic and political changes taking place in Russia.