Problem setting. Today, one of the forms of atypical employment that has not been studied by the science of labor law remains work “on call”. At the end of 2019, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered the draft “Labor Law Codex”, which introduced an employment contract for work on call under the name “employment contract with non-fixed working hours”. Working hours when working on-call has certain characteristics, as for rest time, it can be noted that in the case of a contract with non-fixed working hours, after working a set number of hours for each call, the worker is without work, in a state of “waiting” the next call, which is impossible to predict. Therefore, the question arises whether can “waiting time” relate to the rest time?
Analysis of resent researches and publications. The legal regulation of atypical employment has been analysed by S. Golovin, I. Kiselev, A. Lushnikov, M. Lushnikova, D. Morozov, O. Motsna, N. Nikitina, Protsevskyy O., O.Rymkevych, V.Soifer, O.Yaroshenko. However, there are a number of problems that do not have sufficient coverage, including the question of the ratio of call waiting time to rest time.
Article’s main body. In the case of a contract with non-fixed working hours, after working out the set number of hours for each call, the employee is out of work, in a state of “waiting” for the next call, which is impossible to predict in advance. At this time, the employee is really free from performing their work duties, however, in our opinion, this time cannot be fully used by the employee at his discretion, since the latter is in the call standby mode and, if it is received, must start working. During this period, certain restrictions apply to the employee (for example, the inability to travel to another area, the use of alcoholic beverages). Therefore, we believe that the period of “waiting for a call” is not exactly a time of rest in the doctrinal sense.
Conclusions and prospects for the development. n our opinion, the ability to use time at your own discretion is a defining sign of attributing the waiting time to rest time or a special type of off-duty time. In this context, the time period (number of days) for which the employee must be notified of his / her return to work is important. We believe that the longer the call notification period, the more opportunities the employee will have to use the waiting time at their own discretion (for example, if it is 7 days before the expected start date, the employee has the opportunity to travel to another area and return in advance, work for another employer, and so on), so the waiting time will be close to the signs of rest time. The study of such a category as “waiting time” for work in a contract for work with non-fixed working hours is important and requires further research in order to improve the current labor legislation.
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