New forms of labour contract and labour flexibility in Russia

This paper assesses the claims that employment in the new Russian private sector relies heavily on informal and unregistered labour agreements and that the violation of existing labour law by new private employers is driven by their need for more flexible working arrangements.
The paper shows that these claims are unsupported on every count. The new private sector does not rely heavily on informal or illegal forms of employment and there is no evidence that it uses labour more flexibly, in any of the usual senses of the term, than the traditional sectors of the economy. The conclusion is that there is no economic justification for the systematic violation of the existing labour legislation. It is suggested, therefore, that enforcement of the existing law is a precondition for its effective reform in those areas in which it might be a barrier to restructuring.