Full Transition to a Five-Day Working Week with Two Consecutive Days Off

Abstract

Labor legislation of Russia provides for both a five-day and six-day working weeks with the same 40 working hours limit per week for two labor regimes that makes it meaningless to work six days a week. The paper summarizes the history of days off in Russia and basic international legislation regulating the days off. The author examines two structural groups of arguments, justifying the necessity of enshrining a provision on a mandatory five-day working week with two consecutive days off in labor legislation. The paper substantiates the discrepancy between the provision of labor legislation containing the rule on one day off and part 5 of Article 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation on days off (in plural). The author argues in detail the statement in support of the introduction of a five-day working week for teachers. The author questions the economic feasibility of maintaining the six-day labor regime. It is emphasized that, if a mandatory five-day working week is consolidated in law, the employer’s rights will not be infringed regardless of the form of ownership, because the employer is endowed with legal rules allowing him or her to engage workers to work with their voluntary consent in other schemes of the labor regime (to work overtime, in shifts, etc.). Organizations and enterprises under the current and proposed labour regime may attract workers to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.