Temporary employment is defined in the scientific literature as atypical for the sphere of wage labour and even as an element of precarious employment. Today, fixed-term labour contracts are seen as a mechanism for labour market actors to respond to any shocks in the economy, a way of flexibly regulating the number of employees and reducing "dead" costs for employers. Russian labour law prohibits the conclusion of fixed-term employment contracts for the purpose of avoiding the rights and guarantees provided for workers with whom an indefinite-term employment contract is concluded. But extensive court practice in challenging dismissal due to the expiry of the term of the employment contract shows that a significant proportion of employers conclude fixed-term employment contracts in violation of the requirements of the Labour Code of the Russian Federation, in order to avoid providing labour rights and guarantees to employees. These vio-lations mainly include repeated conclusion of fixed-term contracts for a short period to per-form the same work function, "imposition" of a condition on the fixed-term nature of the con-tract in the absence of the employee's will, in situations where the law requires an agreement of the parties to the employment contract for the conclusion of a fixed-term contract. In the modern economic environment, a form of short-term employment called casual work has developed, which is most often recognised in the literature as informal, precarious employment. Despite this, casual work has become widespread in developed countries, and particularly in jobs related to the on-demand economy, with the use of digital platforms. The negative aspect of the wide use of fixed-term employment contracts in the EU is reflected in the persistent entrenchment of temporary workers in the labour market, whose growth can be restrained only with the assistance of the state. Thus, the analysis of the practice of flexible forms of employment in foreign countries shows that short-term contracts are now widely integrated into the global labour market, which is confirmed by the statistical data on the growth of fixed-term contracts in most coun-tries. This process can hardly be stopped, but, based on the experience of EU countries, it seems possible at least to find a way to adapt to this situation by balancing the rights and interests of workers, employers and the state in such relations and preventing the transfor-mation of fixed-term employment relations into precarious ones.
The resistible rise of the temporary employment industry in France
