The Features of Legal Regulation of Labor Relations in Religious Organizations in the Russian Federation (by the Example of the Russian Orthodox Church)

The purpose of this work is to identify possible ways of solving problems existing in the sphere of labor relations within the Russian Orthodox Church, based on research of legislation and law enforcement practice. In accordance with the goal, the following tasks of this study are formed: to consider the specifics of the functioning of the religious organizations as one of the types of non-profit organizations in normative legal acts; to study the theoretical basis on the issue under consideration; to compare the normative base with the practice that exists in the Russian Orthodox Church; to conduct a comparative analysis of the norms of labor law and the norms of church law; to identify specific elements of labor legal relations within the framework of the religious organizations. According to the results of the work, the following conclusions are drawn: 1) religious organizations can not restrict the labor rights of workers on the basis of their internal regulations; internal regulations must correlate with Russian law; 2) there is no single definition of the term "internal regulations", so an author's version is proposed; 3) the specificity of labor relations in religious organizations is in existence of two categories of workers in the religious organizations: the clergymen with religious personnel –and the auxiliary personnel; 4) priests are not considered by the Orthodox Church as wage earners, as a general rule labor contracts with them are not concluded because the church service cannot be considered as a performance of a certain labor function for a stipulated payment, the ministry is subject only to the church law; 5) the requirements of labor legislation apply exclusively to those workers who perform only security functions and are not directly related to the performance of liturgical activities.