At the beginning of February in Ukraine, the state launched the project «Dia City», which has been preparing for a long time. On the part of the state, the project is led by the Minister of Digital Transformation, the director of the design agency Mikhail Fedorov and his deputy director of the advertising agency Alexander Bornyakov. Now the owners of IT companies can voluntarily change the employment regime for their employees to a more free one: IT specialists of Ukraine will stop suffering from official labor contracts and will be able to work as gig workers under gig contracts. And although many Ukrainian IT companies have long transferred all their employees to FOP (analogous to self-employed in the Russian Federation), this form of employment is still not liberal enough.

Let’s understand a little bit in terms of:
Gig - is a one-time job, a side job.
Gig-employees - employees working through applications with non-permanent employment, for example, Delivery Club, Yandex.Taxi, Yandex.Toloka.
Gig-contract - is a contract between the customer and the contractor for a one-time job, the duties of which are an average between self-employed and employment under the Labor Code: the duties of the employee to the employer are taken from the Labor Code, and the duties of the employer to the employee, as to the self-employed, are in fact absent at all.

At the same time, a lot of positive things have been added for employees:

  • You can stay out of work for a year [V.27]. The employee undertakes not to take competitive actions against the company during the year, including not getting a job with competitors listed in the contract.
  • For the employer to terminate the gig contract, it is enough to notify the employee 3 days in advance [Article 18] or to prescribe any other term in the contract, no more than two weeks of work and two salaries for a reduction in the rate.
  • The contract determines the duration of the working day, lunch, weekends, vacations within almost any limits [Article 21].

The first company to be impressed by the freedoms was the infamous Revolut company about which we wrote separately, the company was seen in unpaid assignments, mass abbreviations and financial махинациях, what admitted the founder himself. The second was joined by SoftServe, whose owner is among the top 100 richest people in Ukraine, while paying his Ukrainian employees 30% less than their Polish and Bulgarian colleagues for the same work. EPAM, Ajax Systems, TA Ventures, Genesis, Reface, Banza, Kyivstar, Datagroup also expressed their support. Now, thanks to Dia City, these noble companies will finally be able to finally deprive their employees of social guarantees.

The workers did not get into the progressive idea of «Dia City» at all. According to the survey, conducted by the portal dou.ua, 80% of employees(60% of developers) voted against, in their opinion it will worsen working conditions(40%) and lead to lower wages(30%). Also petition, organized by the Guild of IT Entrepreneurs against Dia City, gained 25,000 votes in the electronic petition system and was considered by the government with a predictable result.

The sharp polarization of opinions between IT specialists and owners of IT companies vividly emphasizes the nature of these laws and the main beneficiaries of «Dia City». It is unlikely that such a wonderful idea will not leave the borders of Ukraine, in other countries the owners of IT corporations also want more profit at any cost.

Until there is a strong trade union community, the state will adopt such laws without regard to the opinion of the IT community.