Employment contract as a private law transaction: legal qualifications and approaches of judicial practice

In legal studies, there has been a traditional approach that an employment contract is a special agreement between an employee and an employer, the conclusion and execution of which is regulated by Labor Law. In legal doctrine and judicial practice, this approach has gradually been abandoned, considering individual provisions (parts, conditions) and the employment contract as a whole, as well as labor-law payments as a transaction (civil, corporate, etc.). In some cases, employment contracts began to be qualified according to the norms of other branches of legislation (for example, civil, corporate and bankruptcy), including as mixed and unnamed contracts. It has become common practice to legally assess an employment contract or performance under it as an independent civil-law transaction. This paper examines this issue, assesses the degree of convergence of the norms of various branches of law in qualifying the provisions of an employment contract and (or) its execution. The limit of possible variable regulation of issues of concluding and executing an employment contract by individual branches of law is analyzed, as well as the grounds for challenging this contract. As a result of the study, the experience of judicial practice is summarized and new approaches to the interpretation of an employment contract as a private law transaction are proposed.