Obtaining the right to reserve employees

What is happening

Reservation is not something an employer simply decides to do. A company may retain employees held in the reserve only once its tasks, capacity or functions form part of the mobilisation plans and the competent authority has issued it the relevant instructions and the reference numbers of the approved lists of posts and occupations.

In practice, a director often first hears about reservation when a military commissariat or a local authority asks for returns the company has never filed. The opposite also happens: a business performs a state contract, assumes it counts as supporting defence work, and cannot understand why its staff are being called up.

The questions have to be taken in the right order. First establish whether the company belongs to the category entitled to reserve at all, and through which channel — a sector ministry, a regional authority or a municipality. Only then is it worth preparing documents. An application filed on the off-chance usually ends in a refusal and lost time.

What the law says

• Federal Law 31-FZ on mobilisation preparation and mobilisation treats the reservation of citizens held in the reserve as a duty of organisations involved in mobilisation tasks.
• Federal Law 53-FZ on military duty and military service links deferment from call-up under mobilisation to the fact of reservation, not to how valuable an employee is to the business.
• The right to reserve arises when the organisation is included in the relevant plans and the competent authority — a federal sector body, a regional authority or a local authority — issues it the corresponding tasks.
• The lists of posts and occupations open to reservation are set centrally; a company applies them but does not draw them up itself.
• Running reservation requires a distinct area of work: an order, a designated member of staff, returns to the reservation commission and proper record keeping.
• Failures here are treated as breaches in the field of military registration and mobilisation preparation, for which the Code of Administrative Offences provides liability.

What we do

• We review the company's activities, contracts, licences and accreditations and determine whether there are grounds to seek the right to reserve, and through which channel.
• We identify which authority is the competent one for your company and how dealings with it are structured.
• We prepare a reasoned application: what the company does, which tasks it performs and why its employees should be retained.
• We bring military registration to the state in which an application makes sense — reservation is not granted where registration is not in order.
• We prepare the internal documents for the new area of work: the order, the internal rules, the allocation of duties and the record forms.
• We conduct the correspondence and attend meetings with the authorities with you until a substantive answer is given.

What we need from the company

• An extract showing the company's activities, together with details of licences, accreditations and entries in sector registers.
• A list of state and other contracts under which the company performs work of significance to the state.
• The staffing table and figures on the number of employees held in the reserve.
• Existing military registration documents, if registration is already organised: the order, the register and the card index.
• All correspondence with military commissariats and other authorities on registration and reservation.
• Contact details of the member of staff who will run this area inside the company.