Legal issue: whether All-Russian trade unions may create subdivisions that are not envisaged by Article 3 of the Law on Trade Unions – for example, interregional, united or shop trade unions.

Ratio decidendi:  the Constitution of Russia guarantees the freedom of public association (Article 30, part 1), and the Convention of International Labour Organisation permits trade unions to independently work out their charters and administrative regulations. It means that employees and employers may independently establish forms and ways of their interaction. Therefore, trade unions may determine their structure in conformance with the structure of the employing organization. The law-appliers did not consider for a long time Art. 3 of the Law on Trade unions as establishing an exhaustive list of their structural divisions, but in 2011 the Ministry of Justice, as well as the Procuracy and courts, when dealing with the cases of petitioners, lent to the rule in question another meaning. In the opinion of the Court, this wrong interpretation has led to inadmissible intervention of the State in the activities of trade unions.