A Pregnant Worker Employment: Review of Litigation against the Social Fund of Russia and Criteria for Labour Relations’ Fictitiousness

The topic of ghost employee schemes has been relevant in legal science for many years, largely due to the lack of a normative concept and criteria of fictitiousness. The most important within the studied subject for us is the definition of the criteria for the fictitiousness of labour relations in the employment of a pregnant worker, because the formation of specific signs of fictitiousness will allow fair employers to better orient in the situation and not consider employment of this category of workers as a risk for themselves. Purpose: to analyse the theoretical provisions that reveal the essence and nature of ghost employee schemes, to study the judicial practice in the context of disputes between employers and the SFR on the recognition the employment of a pregnant employee as fictitious, to formulate the criteria for the fictitiousness of labour relations applicable to these situations. Methods: to achieve the goals of the study, the following methods of cognition were used: empirical methods of description, comparison and systematisation; theoretical methods of analysis, synthesis, induction; also, the formal legal method was used to describe the legal norms governing the legal relations under consideration. Results: based on the theoretical provisions and the examples of law enforcement, we identify a set of basic criteria that indicate the ghost employee schemes of a pregnant worker: the lack of stuff and economic viability of hiring; the presence of family ties between the management of the employer organisation and the employee; hiring without taking into account the business qualities of the applicant; improperly executed personnel documentation.