Social and Labour Relations During Economic Crisis: How to Balance the Interests

The article deals with the issues of dependence of flexible or rigid labour law norms and macroeconomic effectiveness. The conclusion is made that traditional neoliberal dogmas about negative effect of labour law norms on the economic effectiveness are not supported by the serious empirical proof. In contrary, modern researches show that the long-term positive economic effect of labour law norms may be found in such issues as diminishing the incomes gap, growing consumers’ demand, workforce productivity and creation of knowledge-based economy. The Russian labour law is considered to be not enough flexible in the issues of bureaucratic obligations of the employers towards the state in the human resources management matters. Those requirements should be alleviated without a real danger to harm the employees’ rights. In contrast, the regulation of relations between the employers and employees is considered to be overly flexible, contrary to the popular myths that it repeats the Soviet rigid labour law norms. The author claims that there is enough space to enhance the protection norms in the areas of social dialogue, minimum wages, working time, the regulation of labour relations within the groups of companies and in the number of other issues. All mentioned directions of law modification will not lead to the negative consequences to the economy, but would rather result in a better social stability and employers’ effectiveness in the time of macroeconomic crisis.