Employers have no legal grounds to demand from their staff certificates of negative coronavirus test results, the Russian Ministry of Labor and Social Protection said in its letter in response to the address of head of State Duma (parliament’s lower house) committee for natural resources, property and land relations Nikolai Nikolaev, posted on Monday in his Telegram channel.
“In accordance with paragraph 7, Part 1 of Article 88 of the Labor Code, the employer is not entitled to request information regarding the health status of the employee, except data related to the issue of the capability of the employee to carry out work. Hence, in our opinion, the employer has no legal grounds to demand from the employee either a certificate of negative testing or that they pass the test,” the letter says.
At the same time, the employer is obliged to possess information regarding the health status of employees engaged in heavy duty work, work in harmful or hazardous labor conditions and in work related to transport movements for purposes of determining fitness of the employee to perform the assigned work and for the prevention of occupational diseases, according to the letter.
