There is one wonderful construct in Russian labor law. It is called "borrowed labor." Imagine this: a person works for one company, their management is at another, they are fired by a third, and when they try to figure out who is actually responsible for everything, it turns out that there is no one to hold accountable.

At one time, this construct even sparked a political debate. Between 2012 and 2014, trade unions demanded a ban on borrowed labor. Employers, on the contrary, explained that without it, the economy would lose flexibility, young people would remain unemployed, temporary workers would have no temporary work, and the labor market itself, apparently, would stop being a market and turn into something unknown.

Trade unions responded in a boring and outdated manner: a person must understand who they work for. The employer must be responsible for the worker. The worker must have the opportunity to join a trade union where they actually work. And firing people by transferring them between legal entities, like office chairs, is not good. The debate continued for a long time.

Then the State Duma deputies decided to play along with corporations and came up with a "compromise." One of those that Russian legislation is particularly proud of. Article 56.1 was added to the Labor Code, where it explicitly states: borrowed labor is prohibited. Everyone sighed in relief. Trade unions were relieved, employers were too, but for a different reason. Because at the same time as the ban on borrowed labor in the Labor Code, Chapter 53.1 appeared, explaining in detail exactly how the prohibited borrowed labor can be used completely legally and without any consequences for themselves.

Ban with instructions on use

It turned out according to the classic formula: you can't, but if you really want to, you can. You can direct a worker to another employer to perform obviously temporary work. Initially, it was established as no more than nine months, but then nine months seemed insufficiently temporary to the legislator, and the term was increased to eighteen. A year and a half is, of course, already quite an extensive temporariness. And since the work is considered temporary, the contract with the worker is also concluded for a fixed term.

And here is where it gets interesting. Until recently, all these constructs existed for the author primarily in articles of the Labor Code. But then in judicial practice there was a case that allowed us to see how this mechanism works in living nature.

Let's call the worker "N". On March 20, 2025, N was hired by LLC "Bifighter" as a reception manager at the Customer Service Department. But he worked not for "Bifighter", but under assignment to another company—LLC "Samoliet Management Company". On February 7, 2026, N was fired due to the expiration of the labor contract term.

Here an attentive reader might ask: — Did the term really expire? And this is a good question. Because until the end of the agreement on the provision of workers between companies there were still about three months left. Moreover, N's colleagues, directed by the same agency, continued to perform the same work for the same receiving party. But as we will see further, in borrowed labor, the calendar is a relative thing.

Eternal temporary work

In N's contract it was stated that he was hired temporarily to perform tasks related to internal apartment acceptance at LLC "Samoliet Management Company" projects. It sounds quite temporary. Accept an apartment — work is over. But LLC "Samoliet Management Company" is a large developer structure working simultaneously on a large number of projects. Apartments are being built, contractors do the finishing, someone must accept this finishing. Then the next apartments are built. Then the next ones. It turns out quite strange temporary work: as long as construction, contractors, and apartments exist, there exists the need to accept them.

After N's dismissal, other agency workers continued to work as reception managers for the same receiving party. That is, the position remained. The work remained. The workers remained. Only one specific worker disappeared. Exactly his "temporary task" unexpectedly ended.

Production? Warehouse? Restaurant?

In court, attention was drawn to the LLC "Bifighter" website. The company offered personnel selection for production, banks and insurance companies, retail, warehouses, restaurants, as well as service staff. Personnel selection itself, of course, is legal. But an interesting question arises. Is work in production inherently temporary? What about a warehouse? In a restaurant? In a store?

We get a strange world: enterprises work constantly, warehouses stockpile constantly, restaurants work constantly, and people there for some reason turn out to be temporary. The coffee machine is permanent, the cash register is permanent, the shelf is also permanent. And the person — is temporary.

Based on this, the court was asked to issue a private ruling regarding a possible violation of the rules for providing personnel by a private employment agency. The Civil Procedure Code grants the court such rights. The court did not use this right. The first page of the "Bifighter" website was attached to the case. They looked at it and moved on.

The question of whether mass provision of workers for such positions corresponds to the idea of temporary work specifically did not arouse special interest. That is, formally, borrowed labor is prohibited. But it turns out that obtaining a borrowed worker to perform work that by its nature can be permanent does not present any particular difficulty.

How to finish endless work

But the main beauty of the construction is revealed in the dismissal procedure. "Bifighter" workers were sent to "Samoliet LLC" based on an agreement dated November 1, 2024. Initially, it was valid until July 31, 2025. Then it was extended until April 30, 2026. And the labor contract with N was drawn up differently. There was no specific end date there. It was written that the agreement is valid until completion of the task for internal apartment acceptance. What exactly counts as completion of the task? How many apartments need to be accepted? At which object? What volume of work to perform? Nothing of this did the agreement specify.

This is very convenient. The worker comes to work in the morning, accepts apartments. There is still a lot of work around, colleagues continue to accept apartments. The agreement between the agency and the receiving party also continues to be valid. But suddenly the receiving party writes a certificate: the task is completed. And that's it. Work ended. For one person. For the rest, by some miracle, it continues. LLC "Samoliet LLC" provided such a certificate to the court and the court accepted it.

No separate task was presented that could be checked, compared with the contract, measured in apartments, square meters, or at least documents, as can be judged from the materials of the case. Simply: the task is completed. This is almost a philosophical category. Why completed? Because finished. Why finished? Because completed.

The great power of the certificate

Thus, a flexible mechanism for managing a fixed-term labor contract is revealed. The end date of the contract can be omitted, a specific temporary task can be not described. It is enough to write: "until completion of the task". And then at the necessary moment obtain from the receiving party a document: "task completed". And the fixed-term contract terminates.

The agreement between the two companies can continue to act meanwhile. Other workers can perform the same work. The very type of activity can disappear nowhere. But a specific person becomes no longer needed, consequently, his task somehow ended.

One can say that labor legislation here reaches an almost metaphysical level. Work exists, the workplace exists, workers exist. And labor relations with a specific worker, already there are not.

"Sale"

An especially touching detail was revealed in the act of reconciliation of mutual calculations between LLC "Bifighter" and LLC "Samoliet LLC" for the period from January 1 to July 15, 2026. The document confirmed that after N's dismissal relations between the companies continued and the agency continued to provide workers to the receiving party.

But it is remarkable not so much this. In the operation act, the word "Sale" is indicated. Undoubtedly, we are talking about an accounting designation of a business operation. And yet it is difficult to come up with a more expressive word for the entire construction. The worker formally works at one employer, but actually works at another. For the use of his labor one company receives money from another. In accounting this is formalized as "Sale".

And when a person becomes inconvenient, it turns out that his personal "task completed", that is, he is scrapped.

And the court?

The court of first instance did not discover any special contradictions in this entire construction. It did not disturb him that work continued after N's dismissal. The absence of a specific term in the labor contract did not become a problem. Questions to the indefinite concept "completion of the task" did not arise. It also did not seem significant that the agreement between the agency and the receiving company continued to act. The employer presented a certificate that the task was completed. Therefore, it is completed.

Currently, an appeal complaint has been filed with the Moscow City Court with a request to restore the worker and recognize the labor contract concluded for an indefinite term. We will not predict prospects.

By the way, LLC "Bifighter" has a formally strong argument: the agency claims that it is not entitled to conclude indefinite contracts with workers sent to the receiving party in such cases. Here the circle finally closes. The work is permanent. The worker is needed permanently. But he cannot be hired permanently because he is sent as temporary. And he can be sent as temporary because the job is declared temporary. Why is it temporary? Because that is how it is written in the contract.

So what was actually banned?

And now we can go back to 2014. Democratic trade unions feared that borrowed labor would allow the real employer to evade responsibility, hinder the creation of trade unions, make employment unstable, and facilitate the dismissal of workers. Employers explained that it was all about labor market flexibility and helping those who needed temporary employment. Then borrowed labor was banned.

Twelve years have passed. And today we see a worker who performs an ordinary production function in the interest of a large company, works side by side with other sent workers, is employed in a job that does not disappear anywhere, but can be dismissed at any moment after a short certificate appears stating that his "task has been completed."

It turns out that borrowing temporary workers to perform permanent work cannot be done, but buying and selling such workers can. This is truly an outstanding invention of the Russian legal system and its undoubtedly noteworthy contribution to the global trend of labor precarization.