The Activities of the Russian Tripartite Commission as a Macro-aspect of Social Dialogue Facilitation

Abstract

This paper highlights the definition of the ‘social dialogue’ concept and the results of its study at the national level in Russia. The relevance of this research is determined by the need to harmonize social and labor relations as one of the main sources of increasing labour productivity and satisfaction of both workers and employers (with assistance of the government). This is important under the conditions of global labour market change – increase in flexibility and emergence of new labour forms. The paper presents an analysis of the Russian tripartite commission activities. The research materials include the data of the commission sessions’ protocols for the last 8 years (from 2010 to 2017), as well as the data on violations following the results of the State Labour Inspection work in regions of the Russian Federation for 2013–2016, presented in reports of Federal Service for Labor and Employment. We single out the main questions that had been considered at meetings for the last 8 years and the frequency of their discussions. The research results show that categories and frequency of the questions considered at commission sessions do not necessarily have a direct link with the labour violations recorded by official services. At the same time, the number of labour violations on some questions is reduced due to the establishment of coherence among three parties that confirms the importance of social dialogue among all the participants. Besides, we have outlined the main problems in the work of the Russian tripartite commission on the basis of the studied protocols.