Violation of the labor rights of elderly Russians may entail criminal liability of the employer.

The deputies of the State Duma approved the respective initiative of the Russian president in the second, mainly, reading at the plenary session on Thursday, September 20. The provisions of the bill "On the establishment of criminal liability for an unreasonable refusal to admit to work or unjustified dismissal of a person on grounds of achievement of pre-retirement age" can soon supplement. 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In particular, the new legal norm will protect citizens who are less than 5 years old before leaving for a well-deserved rest, from age discrimination. An employer who fires or does not hire a person because of his advanced years will face a fine of up to 200 thousand. ruble. or up to 360 hours of compulsory work. "We presume that this rule is likely to be preventive and will psychologically influence those who, when making a decision, start thinking about how to dismiss a pre-retirement worker without good reason or not to take him to work," he said. Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin. This bill is among the proposals made by President Vladimir Putin after the August appeal to the population of the country over the imminent changes in the Russian pension system. Among other initiatives of the head of state is to make the age of retirement for women 60 years, and not 63, as the government initially proposed;

Preservation of most federal and regional benefits from 55 years for women and 60 years for men; allocation of paid days for the annual medical examination to citizens of pre-retirement age, etc.. In August, the State Duma held large public-parliamentary hearings on the improvement of pension legislation. As a result, a working group was established, which included deputies and experts. Their task is to study and systematize all the amendments coming to the State Duma for the second reading of the government bill on the modernization of the pension system.