Swimsuit of the Labor Code

Teachers of the whole country arranged a flash mob #teacher of the Omsk colleague Victoria Popova

The history teacher Victoria Popova took the courses at the modeling agency, as part of the educational process was photographed in a closed swimsuit and did not post this photo anywhere, but the agency itself posted a picture in the store advertising. Advertising was seen by the parents who turned to the school administration. The school administration considered that the photograph was “frivolous content”, and that the teacher caused damage to the image of the school and the prestige of the teacher - and invited her to quit. Victoria Popova quit, but a few days later the Ministry of Education of the Omsk Region invited her to stay at her previous job.

Nevertheless, indignant teachers throughout the country arranged a flash mob: first in the Ombudsman of Education Ombudsman group in VKontakte, and then on personal pages they began to upload their photos in swimsuits, accompanying them with a hasitel #teacher and comments: teachers also go to the beach, they are not at all a burial and not spanies, they can even afford to themselves A glass of wine on a holiday. In a word, as one participant formulated, a flash mob is “our answer to the Hanjam.”

In the photo album of the flash mob there are very different teachers: young and not very, women and men, with children and without children-at the same time nothing especially frivolous (well, maybe someone grimaces at the sight of dancing on the pole, there are a couple of such photographs), but there are a lot of sea, sun and joy. Something that does not really fit with the concept of "school" at all.

In the past few years, teachers in different cities of the country have been trying to dismiss every now and then because of events related to their private life-usually photographs, posts or even reposts on social networks. The case of the teacher of Alexander formerly from the Oryol region, deprived of work and sentenced by 300 hours of correctional labor for a poem about Ukrainian events in 2014, is known.

In 2016, a music school teacher Maria Shestopalova was fired in Krasnoyarsk - according to the complaint of activist Timur Bulatov (Isaev), who carefully collected a compromise to teachers and sent him to the instances. The basis for dismissal was the piercing of the lower lip. According to his complaint, she was fired (and then moved to another city) Magnitogorsk teacher Olga Bakhaeva-for reposts of the posts of LGBT communities on her page in VKontakte. He tried to achieve the dismissal of the St. Petersburg teacher Ekaterina Bogach (also because of the support of the LGBT community), but her former students who signed an open letter stood up for her.

There are a lot of such stories in the last five years. And the point here is not only in the increased popularity of social networks, not that there are more and more teachers in social networks. And not that just in these years a public request for new conservatism grew and laws have been adopted that can be incriminated to teachers.

The point is that the teacher is the only profession whose representative by law can be dismissed for “the commission of an immoral act” (P8 Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).

After that, it is impossible to get a job in the specialty. At the same time, the legislation does not have any clarification of the concept of “immoral act”, and any director has the right to interpret this item as you like.

And while this law exists - no flash mob is overcome.

Vsevolod Lukhovitsky

Co -chairman of the education union "Teacher"

- From the point of view of law, the whole history of the Omsk teacher does not have a vacation egg. Nobody dismissed her, she quit herself. She did not post a photo in the social network, this was made by the agency. The agency is not some kind of underground company, but an official commercial enterprise operating in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. Work by a fashion model is not prostitution classes, she did not do anything criminal or immoral, and if the director really wanted to dismiss her, she would win the court.

The problem, however, is different: that the Labor Code really makes it possible to dismiss any teacher for an “immoral act”, although the concept of “morality” is not combined with the concept of “law”.

But there is also an explanation of the Plenum of the Supreme Court, which states that an immoral act can be committed not only during working hours, and not only in the presence of children, but also adults. Therefore, the immoral can be considered any action of any teacher who is not consistent with someone’s ideas about morality (for example, I can easily imagine the dismissal of the unwanted administration of the teacher for a glass of champagne drunk in the New Year). The article can be applied even without taking into account the opinion of the trade union. And this is an ugly legal situation.

There is a psychological side in this problem. We are all sure that our pages in social networks are our private life. But we are very mistaken. Everything that I published on the Internet can be broadcast by thousands of people and cannot be considered my letter to friends. In this sense, teachers have already become the same public people as government officials. And they, like officials, are impossible for them, because they are under a watchful supervision.

Very good, of course, that teachers stood up for a colleague. It is very easy to hang your photo in social networks - it is much easier than writing a petition demanding to cancel an article by the law. It would be better for everyone to write in a letter to the director of the Omsk school and explained to him why he was wrong. It would have at least some effect. In the meantime, the effect is also the one that they themselves are substituted, and there is no guarantee that some vigilant activist will not bring them to them, and some vigilant director in Tmutarakani will not fire someone. And then they will ask our trade union to find them a free lawyer. We will find, yes, but why to substitute?