The Legal Concept of Employer's Financial Liability and Problems of Its Application

For the first time in the domestic science of labor law, the article examines the complex and practically undeveloped concept of material responsibility of the employer to the employee, legalized by the legislator in the codified labor act, which emphasizes the relevance of the topic of this work. The essence of this concept is the obligation of the employer to compensate the damage caused by his fault to the employee, which means that it is based on such legal categories as “duty” and “damage”, which the author focuses on. Their analysis revealed a number of problems of the concept under consideration related to the imperfection of the norms that form its legal basis governing the financial responsibility of the employer, which led to his release from financial responsibility for non-fulfillment of his work duties, which entailed violation of the individual labor rights of employees. This indicates the complete inconsistency of this concept, the legal framework of which is in need of significant reconstruction, which causes the legislator to rethink it. Therefore, the author proposes a new concept of the employer’s financial liability, the essence of which lies not in the employer’s obligation to compensate for the damage caused to the employee, but in the obligation to suffer adverse consequences provided for by a punitive sanction.