Making an employment contract: the history and challenges

This paper addresses an important issue of labor law concerning the form of conclusion of an employment contract. A historical analysis of the evolution of Russian labor law and its comparison with the development of the labor law doctrine allowed the author to determine that a series of doctrinal ideas within the framework of the statutory regulation concerning the conclusion of employment contracts have been legally implemented in Russia. The history of modern Russian labor law demonstrates that a written form of a contract of personal employment was essentially introduced by the Rules on the Supervision over Factories in the Manufacturing Industry issued in 1886. The legal tradition was further reinforced in the Labor Code of the RSFSR in 1922, which unlike pre-Revolution labor acts did not include the requirement to record the conditions of workers’ employment in their paybooks, while stating that the written form of the employment contract was more preferable when concluding employment contracts for a certain period of time if the contents of the employment contract had not only necessary conditions of employment, but some additional conditions as well...