According to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, weekly rest is given to every employee. It is at least 2 days in a five-day working week and one in a six-day week. By law, rest must be at least 42 hours weekly. Additional work on weekends must be paid double.
Most often, Sunday is a day off. The second free day is regulated by a collective agreement or internal regulations of the organization. As a rule, with a work week consisting of 5 days, 2 days off follow each other. With a shift work schedule, days off are also determined by internal regulations and can be provided on weekdays. In what cases are additional days off allowed? Let's figure it out.
Weekend work
Working on official weekends in the organization is prohibited by the Labor Code. There are certain rules. It is possible to call an employee on his legal day off only with the written consent of the latter and only in certain cases listed below.
- In case of an industrial accident or natural disaster to eliminate the consequences.
- In order to prevent an accident.
- To perform urgent tasks on which the work of the organization as a whole depends.
- Workers in creative professions.
- On an individual basis and exclusively voluntarily on the part of the employee.
Who gets extra days off?
What is it regulated by?
The issue of obtaining an additional free day is regulated by the labor legislation of the Russian Federation, and specifically Article 262. This document states that parents or guardians of disabled children can receive additional free days. At the same time, they are paid by the federal insurance service. Additional days off are provided for the above category of citizens to fulfill their parental responsibilities. The basis for their provision is considered to be a written statement from the employee.
Article 262 of the Labor Law states that those who have custody of a disabled child are given 4 additional free days per month. Not only parents, but also trustees or guardians can get an extraordinary day off. If there are several latter, then the weekends can be divided at their discretion. Women who work in the village are entitled to one extraordinary day off from work per month. We'll talk about how to pay for additional days off later.
How and when can I get extra days off?
Additional free days are not provided to the following categories of citizens:
- Citizens on basic paid leave.
- Citizens on additional leave.
- Citizens on maternity leave.
If the additional day off coincides with the employee being on sick leave, it can be moved to another day in the same month. This can only be done under the following conditions: the employee must go to work and provide a certificate of incapacity for work in the current month. That is, if an employee did not use his additional day off, say, in March, this day off will not be transferred to April. The right to additional days off can begin to be used from the period when the child was assigned a disability group. This right ends upon reaching the age of majority or when the category of disability is removed.
Documenting
To ensure that the employer does not encounter any problems during supervisory measures for compliance with labor laws, the provision of free leave must be justified by a written request from the employee.
The application is written in any form in legible handwriting or printed out using modern office equipment, with a personal signature at the end.
A prerequisite is to indicate:
- to whom and from whom the appeal;
- from what date, month, year the employee requests free leave and its duration;
- dates on which the application is submitted.
The reasons for granting leave without pay do not have to be described, having determined only the presence of family circumstances, if the employee does not belong to the category of persons to whom the law guarantees additional rest at their request.
A sample application is usually available in the HR department; you can use our example:
General Director of Meridian LLC Ivanishin I.A. Merkulov Nikolay Pavlovich, tab. No. 245
Statement
I ask you to grant me, as a working pensioner, leave without pay from 08/01/2020 for 14 calendar days.
07/15/2020 signature N.P. Merkulov
The law does not stipulate how many days before the start of the vacation you need to submit an application. At the same time, you should not leave your job without permission, even if the application is submitted in advance.
The personnel service issues an appropriate order, which must be familiarized to the employee against signature, otherwise the employee’s absence may be regarded as absenteeism, which is fraught with disciplinary punishment up to and including dismissal.
Today, unified forms of orders are not mandatory for use; they can be approved by local legal acts.
The employer can take the standard T-6 form as a sample order.
The written order must include:
- name of the enterprise as a legal entity;
- registration number and date of publication;
- information about the employee who is granted leave (personal data and position held, place of work);
- clarification of the type of leave provided and its period;
- signatures of the first manager and interested person on familiarization.
In the time sheet, free leave can be indicated in digital or letter form, taking into account the circumstances of its provision:
- according to an agreement reached with the employer, DO – 16;
- in situations provided for by the legislation of OZ -17;
- as an additional (under the terms of the collective agreement) DB – 18.
Confirmation from the parent's place of work
If both parents or multiple guardians receive paid additional days off, you must confirm that one of them did not choose the allotted days. For this purpose, a certificate from the employer is provided. It can be taken from the place of work of the second guardian or parent. This type of benefit is monthly, which means that an application for additional days off will need to be written every month. But there are a few exceptions here, for example if the parent:
- single (with documentary evidence);
- is listed as missing, dead or has limited rights to the child;
- stays in places of deprivation or restriction of freedom;
- is on a long-term business trip for more than one month.
All of the above facts must be documented and attached to the application for additional days off. What else is worth considering? What does an additional day off for child care entail?
HOW MANY DAYS SHOULD BE PROVIDED
Additional days of rest can be provided to an employee only during the period of work. If he is on annual paid leave, leave without pay or leave to care for a child under three years of age, as well as during a period of temporary disability, this benefit is not available to him.
The legislator determined not only the total number of days off, but also established the frequency of their recording - one month. Thus, he limited the employee’s ability, for example, to add up his days off.
To eliminate any doubts in this matter, the Government of the Russian Federation has established a rule for the application of Part 1 of Art. 262 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation: “Additional paid days off that are not used in a calendar month are not transferred to another calendar month”[2].
If an employee falls ill while using additional days off, he has the right to provide sick leave and write a new application indicating other dates. In this case, the employer will be obliged to provide him with such rest if the month for which the days off have been provided has not yet expired (clause 9 of the Rules). If the month is over, the employer has no reason to provide them.
Required documents
In addition to a certificate stating that the other parent or guardian did not receive additional days off, you must provide the following set of documents:
- A certificate confirming the child's disability.
- Confirmation of registration of a disabled child at the place of residence.
- Birth certificate, guardianship or adoption certificate, that is, any document confirming the right to exercise parental responsibilities.
These documents are provided one-time for the period specified in them. If the certificate is issued for a year, then it is valid once a year. The original documents are returned to the employee after review.
Payment for additional days off is made only for disabled children and is calculated based on the average salary for the past year. Women working in the village are not paid an additional day off.
The number of extraordinary days off does not depend on the number of disabled children in the care of one family. Below we will consider in more detail the issue of providing citizens with additional free days.
Additional days off to care for a disabled person
Among the nuances regarding the documents required when applying for an extraordinary holiday, it should be taken into account that in addition to the child’s disability certificate itself, you will also need to obtain a certificate from the local social protection authorities with information that the child is not being held in special custody. institution, that is, not under the care of the state. However, this rule does not apply to detention in five-day and six-day boarding schools.
If one of the parents is not officially employed or is providing himself with work independently (for example, in the case of an individual entrepreneur), then the second working parent submits a certificate stating that his spouse is unemployed or provides himself with work independently. Only if such paper is provided will the working parent be allocated and paid for the required 4 days off from work per month. If one of the spouses takes part of the weekend, the other can take the remaining paid days off upon presentation of the certificate described above. If one of the parents is on vacation or maternity leave, then the second parent can use the right to provide additional free days.
Average earnings are calculated by dividing wages accrued for the billing period by the number of working days in this period based on the average working hours, in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.
Submitting an application
An application for an additional day off is written in free form. If the company has a locally approved letterhead, then it is advisable to use it. But the employer is also obliged to accept a document drawn up in any form. Fill out the application on a standard white sheet of office paper. You can write it by hand or type it on a computer.
The following information must be included:
- the name of the company in which the applicant works, its organizational and legal form;
- surname and initials of the head of the enterprise;
- Full name, position, structural unit of the employee;
- document's name;
- please provide days off;
- link to the article of the Labor Code, which establishes the right to additional rest;
- number of days off;
- date of start and end of rest;
- list and description of attached documents;
- date of application;
- personal signature of the employee.
Sample application for additional days off for the mother of a disabled child:
General Director of JSC Samotsvet
Orlovsky E.E.
Leading Specialist of the Monitoring Department
Zolotukhina Valentina Eduardovna
Statement
In accordance with the first part of Article No. 262 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, I ask you to provide me with four additional days off from November 18 to 21, 2019, maintaining the average salary due to the fact that I am caring for a disabled minor child.
I am attaching to the application:
- Child's birth certificate No. 9321452.
- Certificate of disability of the child No. 9886521 series ITU-2013 dated 04/10/2014.
- Certificate from the Department of Social Protection of the Population No. 625 dated August 31, 2014 stating that the child is not being kept in a specialized children's institution fully supported by the state.
- Certificate from the place of work of the child’s father No. 25 dated November 15, 2021 stating that he has not been and will not be given additional days off in November.
11/15/2019 (signature) V.E. Zolotukhina
Applications for days off for other preferential categories of employees are drawn up in a similar way.
Days off for women workers in rural areas
As described above, rural workers are provided, upon written request, with 1 additional day off per month without pay. Moreover, an employee may demand an additional day off under the Labor Code without specifying a reason. Since a priori it is assumed that this day will be dedicated to family and children. According to the law “On urgent measures to improve the situation of women, families, protection of motherhood and childhood in rural areas,” an employer does not have the right to refuse an employee.
An order is issued on additional days off.
You can negotiate the procedure for granting an additional day off either by drawing up an application monthly or by determining the number of additional days required at the beginning of the year, half-year, quarter, etc. Denial of an employee’s legal right to have a day off from work may serve as a reason to contact the labor commission for further proceedings, including judicial proceedings. After all, such a refusal is an illegal infringement of the rights of employees.
Another comment on Article 319 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation
The right to receive an additional day off provided for in the commented article is granted to: - one of the parents; - guardian; - to the trustee; - foster parent.
The conditions for obtaining such a right are the work of these persons in the regions of the Far North and equivalent areas, as well as the presence of a child under the age of 16 years.
An additional day off without pay is provided based on a written application from the relevant person. A day off is provided once a month. If it is provided to one of the parents, the other will not have the right to receive the corresponding guarantee during the same month.
As noted in the Resolution of the Plenum of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation dated January 28, 2014 N 1, the procedure for providing an additional day off provided for in the commented article is similar to the procedure for providing additional paid days off to one of the parents (guardian, trustee, other person raising children without a mother) for care for disabled children in accordance with Article 262 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. It must be taken into account that it is not a disciplinary offense for an employee to use additional days off if the employer, in violation of the statutory obligation, refuses to provide such days.
It should be noted that judicial practice in considering cases related to an employer’s refusal to provide an additional day off to a parent working in the Far North and equivalent areas with a child under the age of 16 is insignificant. Thus, in accordance with the Review of the RF Armed Forces of the practice of courts considering cases related to the implementation of labor activities by citizens in the regions of the Far North and equivalent areas, approved by the Presidium of the RF Armed Forces on February 26, 2014, in 2010-2012 there was a single case of a dispute being considered by the court , associated with the employer’s refusal to provide an additional day off to a parent working in the Far North and equivalent areas and having a child under the age of 16. In resolving this dispute, the court correctly proceeded from the fact that the provision of an additional day off is the right of one of the parents with a child under 16 years of age, therefore the employer of such an employee does not have the right to refuse to provide him with the specified day off due to business needs.
Rules for workers of the Far North
According to Article 319 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, parents working in the Far North or in areas equivalent to it are given one extraordinary unpaid day off per month. This rule applies to those children whose age does not exceed sixteen years.
As in the case of rural workers, the employer does not have the right to refuse to receive one additional free day per month for the above-mentioned category of citizens. If an employee of the specified category has several children, the number of days does not increase. This will be only 1 day per month. As in the case of parents of children with disabilities, the day off is granted not only to parents, but also to legal representatives: trustees or guardians. The procedure for granting an extraordinary day off is exactly the same as in all previous cases, upon application by the employee and upon presentation of a certificate of non-use of the day off by the other parent.
Additional days off for those who combine work and study
Employees who combine university studies with work are entitled to additional days off according to the Labor Code. However, they are partially paid. An employee undergoing part-time or evening studies at accredited higher educational institutions, 10 months before leaving to defend his thesis, has a reduced work week by 7 hours or is offered one day off. In this case, 50% of average earnings are paid, but not less than the minimum wage. This category includes not only students of universities, but also students of state-accredited institutions where they can receive secondary vocational education.
Conditions for providing a day off from work or reducing working hours during the week:
- If the education is acquired by the employee for the first time.
- If a person is studying in several educational institutions at once, free time is provided for studying only in one educational institution of the employee’s choice.
The calculation, as in previous cases, is made by calculating average earnings. An additional day of rest is provided for working on a day off.
The legislative framework
A day off is a free day or a short period of free time (several days), during which an employee is released from his work activity in agreement with the employer and on the basis of his order. In fact, this is an additional day off or a short one-day vacation.
This exemption from labor is possible in two cases:
- paid one-day leave - if provided to the donor and unpaid - if provided for work on a day off (since the day off on which the employee worked was already paid);
- time off due to vacation. Often in this case, the specialist receives a free day without registration, and then, after being granted long-term rest, works it out according to the schedule or leaves earlier. Although in practice such agreements are quite common, it is better not to allow this, as problems with registration may arise: the employer’s refusal of the agreement or other documentary difficulties (for example, when registering an accident, etc.).
We also remind you: if an employee was involved in work on a day off or a non-working holiday, the administration is obliged to either pay him double the amount, or single, but with an additional day off.
Characteristic features of receiving days off in certain industries
There are some sectors of the economy that have certain features in receiving days off and paying for them. For example, this applies to the civil aviation sector of the Russian Federation. For example, if a dispatcher was brought to work on a legally free day, he will certainly be offered another day to rest, since there is a legally regulated regime for the distribution of working time and rest for employees who manage air traffic.
Women working in the field of mechanical engineering and raising a child under the age of sixteen are given one extraordinary free day per month without pay. The same applies to women working in the field of transport construction.
