Peculiarities of Modification and Termination of the Employment Contract with Athlete and Coach

The stability of labour relations between athletes, coaches and their employers is a guarantee of high sports results. However, a significant number of individual labour disputes with these employees are traditionally associated with modification and termination of an employment contract. The practice of considering such cases is quite controversial, which is not least due to the fact that these disputes are usually referred to various sports jurisdictional bodies. Peculiarities of changing and terminating an employment contract with an athlete and a coach are established not only by labour legislation, but also by the norms of sports federations and leagues. In Russian legal science, there is a clear lack of in-depth systematic research on this topic. The purpose of the thesis is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of peculiarities of legal regulation of modification and termination of an employment contract with an athlete and a coach for the subsequent identification of relevant theoretical and practical problems and development of proposals for their solution. The first chapter of the work is devoted to the analysis of the specifics of the labour legal status of sportspeople and coaches, as well as to the study of the role of an employment contract in regulating labour relations with such employees. The second chapter discusses the peculiarities of changing an employment contract with an athlete and a coach. The practice of transferring (relocating) of an athlete to the reserve team of a sports club has become widespread in team sports and in certain cases can be considered as an abuse of rights by an employer and (or) discrimination of an employee. Labour legislation provides for a special type of transfer – a temporary transfer of an athlete to another employer. The third chapter of the thesis is devoted to the study of peculiarities of termination of an employment contract with an athlete and a coach. In order to ensure the stability of labour relations in professional sports, all-Russian sports federations and professional sports leagues have adopted sets of rules that restrict the transfer of athletes from one sports organization to another, as well as the termination of an employment contract on the initiative of an athlete and a coach. If it is stipulated in an employment contract, an athlete is obligated to make a payment to an employer for terminating an employment contract on his own initiative without valid reasons, as well as on the initiative of an employer on the grounds relating to disciplinary sanctions. This payment has a special legal nature and has no analogues in Russian labour law. The author concludes that it is permissible to establish such an obligation of an athlete only in those sports where the normative acts of the relevant All-Russian sports federation contain a list of valid reasons for terminating an employment contract on the athlete’s initiative, as well as principles and criteria for determining the amount of such payment. Lawful termination of an employment contract with a coach for violating anti-doping rules, as well as the termination of an employment contract with an athlete in case of violation of anti-doping rules or sports disqualification for a period of six months or more is extremely difficult without modification of labour legislation in terms of application of disciplinary sanction of dismissal on the mentioned grounds. Due to the inconsistency or direct contradiction to the labour legislation of a number of norms of all-Russian sports federations and professional sports leagues regarding the regulation of labour of sportspeople and coaches, it is necessary to determine the place of acts of such organizations in the system of labour law sources.