How to confirm work experience without a work book?

In what cases is it necessary to confirm work experience?

The need to confirm work experience arises when a citizen retires. Depending on the years of work, the labor pension is calculated, and its size is determined.

Elena Smirnova

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Before the pension reform, which began in 2002, length of service was the main indicator for pension calculations. And after the innovations, the main factor became the insurance period and the amount of monthly contributions to the Pension Fund.

However, for persons whose working activity began in the pre-reform years, length of work experience remains an important indicator. It is equivalent to modern insurance experience, with points accrued for each year worked on the principle of valorization - converting years worked into the monetary value of insurance premiums.

In some cases, having a certain amount of work experience makes it possible to retire early, before a person reaches retirement age. This applies to a number of specialties with particularly difficult working conditions:

• MORF military personnel.
• Workers in hot shops.
• Workers in industries with harmful and hazardous working conditions.
• Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, FSB, Ministry of Emergency Situations, National Guard and other federal departments, with paramilitary conditions of service.

The length of service, in addition to the actual time of work in production or service in an institution, includes:

• Conscript service in the army.
• Caring for a newborn baby.
• Caring for an incapacitated disabled person.
• Time spent on registration in the central registration center.
• For spouses of military personnel, the length of service includes time spent living in remote garrisons where employment was impossible.
• The term of imprisonment if the citizen was later rehabilitated.

Thus, confirmation of work experience will be relevant for all persons whose working life began before 2002. — before the introduction of a point system for calculating pension payments.

In addition, the number of years worked in production also affects the amount of a number of social benefits - for example, when paying sick leave, or calculating maternity payments during pregnancy. In addition, some employers impose conditions for job applicants, among which a frequently encountered requirement is that they have a certain amount of work experience in the proposed specialty.

Experience and salary until 2002

You can confirm your work experience and salary before 2002 by contacting the territorial division of the Pension Fund at your place of residence and providing additional documents.

According to the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation “On approval of the Rules for calculating and confirming insurance experience for the establishment of insurance pensions” dated October 2, 2014 No. 1015, labor (insurance) experience can be confirmed by entries made in the work book, and in case of its absence, in the following documents:

• employment contracts;
• extracts from orders;
• certificates issued by the employer;
• employee’s personal accounts and statements of wages issued;
• statements confirming the fact of payment of obligatory payments to tax authorities;
• other documents that contain information about periods of work.

These documents may be “in the hands” of the citizen himself. If they are missing, then you should contact the employer for the period that was recorded incorrectly or not recorded at all. After receiving the relevant application from the employee for the release of information, the employer is obliged to provide certified copies of the certificates within three days.

Pension fund specialists recommend starting the search for missing documents in cases where the citizen was officially registered and received a so-called “white” salary. In the 90s, it was a very common situation in the country when an employer gave his subordinates a “gray” salary and did not pay mandatory insurance contributions to the Pension Fund. In these cases, a person loses his insurance period and receives a pension that is less than what he expected.

Ways to confirm work experience

The main way to confirm work experience today is a special document that displays all the information about a citizen’s work activity - a work book. In recent years, there have been numerous conversations about the need to transfer these paper documents into electronic format and enter them into a common data system.

But, as of 2021, such a transfer has not been made, and entries in the work book still remain the main way for an employee to confirm his length of service. However, a paper book is not durable and may become unusable or accidentally get lost. What are the possibilities for confirming work experience in this case?

Methods and procedure for confirming work experience

A citizen’s length of service (work experience) is one of the main conditions for obtaining the right to receive a pension, which also affects its size.
When applying for a pension, citizens provide documents indicating that the person has worked a certain number of years at a particular enterprise. The basic rules for confirming work experience are set out in Government Decree No. 555 of 2002. 2 ways to confirm work experience are legally approved:

• Documentary
  using official documents of citizens. In this order, you can confirm all types of work experience: general, continuous, insurance.
• Witness's testimonies.
  This method is used in the absence or shortage of official documents, it is auxiliary, with its help only the period of the citizen’s total length of service is proven.

The rules for documenting length of service are divided, in turn, into 2 stages:

• Before registering as an insured person on the basis of the Federal Law on personalized accounting, which came into force in 1996.
• After pension insurance.

Based on the Federal Law “On Labor Pensions,” the procedure for calculating the length of service earned by citizens during different periods of their working life is regulated. All established facts are confirmed in the form of various documents, which are stored in the prescribed manner at the place of work.

How to confirm your experience?

The procedure for restoring information about experience is regulated by the provisions of Government Resolution No. 1015, adopted in 2014. It spells out the necessary actions in case of loss of official documents or the presence of a certain work experience. According to this resolution, there are two main methods of confirmation:

• Documentary - when information is confirmed by extracts and copies of official documents indicating that this citizen was on the staff of the organization, served in a military unit, etc.
• Testimony of witnesses . They are accepted for consideration only in the absence of official documents, or as additional evidence when calculating the duration of work.

What will you need?

The procedure for a citizen who needs to obtain certain evidence of work experience is determined by current regulations and consists of the following steps:

1. Drawing up an application for the need to obtain documents and certificates confirming work experience. Submitted to the former employer.
2. Obtaining appropriate confirmation from the archives. If no documents have been preserved in the archives, you will need to obtain a certificate about this. If data about an employee is lost due to the fault of the employer, he must provide an explanation. If the documentation is destroyed as a result of certain force majeure circumstances, the organization submits a certificate of the incident that occurred - fire, flood, etc.
3. If it is impossible to obtain supporting documentation, the only way out is to provide testimony.

Necessary documentation and certificates

In a situation where the HR department of an enterprise or the employee himself has lost his work book, the following documentation is allowed to be used as confirmation of work experience:

• An employment contract concluded with the employee.
• Any certificates issued by the human resources department signed by the head of the organization.
• Extracts from internal orders for the enterprise.
• Documentation on the calculation and issuance of wages, vacation pay, maternity and other payments passing through the organization’s accounting department.
• Copies of payment documents confirming the employer’s transfer to the tax service, pension, medical and social funds of payments for this employee.
• Certificates from the military commissariat or military unit where the citizen served.
• Certificate from the social insurance fund regarding payment of sick leave benefits.
• Characteristics issued by the management of an enterprise to its employee.
• Certificate of a member of a trade union organization with notes on the payment of trade union dues for a certain period of time.

Step by Step Actions

The entire procedure for confirming work experience consists of several stages. To do this, first of all, you will need to contact your former employer. All information relating to each specific employee must be stored in the archives of the enterprise for a clearly established period of time, after which it is transferred for storage to the city archives.

When five years have not yet passed since the employee’s dismissal, you should contact the company’s human resources department for supporting documentation. After this period, it goes to the city archives.

Proof

If a citizen worked at an enterprise on a general basis, then if he loses his work book, he can request the above documents as supporting documents: a copy of the employment contract, extracts from orders, etc. But in a number of cases, there are types of activities in which there is no work book as the main document confirming experience and qualifications. All these cases are provided for by current legislation:

• Fulfillment of labor duties on the basis of a civil law agreement. In this situation, the time from the moment the contract is signed until its expiration is counted.
• For individual entrepreneurs and farmers, the proof document will be a certificate from the Federal Tax Service or the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation about making tax and pension payments within a certain time frame.
• Employees of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other paramilitary services that do not require work records can confirm their length of service with certificates from military commissariats and unit personnel departments.

Witness's testimonies

If it is impossible to find any documentary evidence of work in a certain organization, a citizen, to confirm his case, has the right to attract two witnesses. This right is stated in Federal Law No. 173 of 2001. They may be persons who previously worked with the citizen at the same enterprise at the same time.

Witness testimony can be used to confirm work experience in a variety of organizations that maintain personal records of citizens - a branch of the Pension Fund of Russia, at an enterprise that requires information about a previous place of work.

To do this, submit an application supported by the following documents:

• Confirmation of the fact of loss or damage to the work book due to the fault of the employee - fire, natural disaster or careless storage.
• If a document is lost due to the fault of the employer, an explanatory note from the HR department is provided.
• When documents are not found in the city/district archive, you should present a certificate about this issued by the archive employees.

Witnesses, before giving evidence, must present documents confirming their identity, as well as the fact of work (service) in a certain institution. In terms of time, the terms of their work must coincide with the time of work in the same organization of the citizen in whose favor they testify.

Requests to the archives

To confirm your work experience through the archives, you will need to fill out a specific application form. It is a form where you need to enter the following information:

• The name of the archive where the application is submitted.
• Individual details of the applicant - full name, date of birth.
• Address of residence and registration.
• The time period for which the applicant needs information.
• The name of the institution where the applicant worked and his position.
• The basis for issuing a certificate is, in this case, the loss of a work record book.
• At the bottom of the application is the date of preparation and signature.

Elena Smirnova

Pension lawyer, ready to answer your questions.

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You can submit an application during a personal visit to the institution, or with the help of the territorial MFC. Within two weeks, archive staff process the data and issue the applicant with the necessary certificates or extracts from documents.

Confirmation of experience with witness testimony

Witness testimony can be a good help for citizens who need to confirm their work experience if, for some reason, other documents are missing.
To do this, the employee should write an application to the personnel department of the enterprise, where personalized accounting is carried out. sample application for establishing the fact of work in .pdf format (Adobe Reader) The application must be accompanied by the following documents:

• A document that confirms with facts the circumstances as a result of which the work book was damaged or lost. For example, confirmation from the fire inspection service about a fire at the facility, indicating the date of the event.
• Certificate of loss of the book signed by the employer indicating the reasons.
• Certificate from the archive about the absence of data on the requested periods of work.

If the loss of documents occurred as a result of careless storage or intentional destruction, but the employee is not to blame for this, then the testimony of 1-2 witnesses can be used as confirmation of work experience.
They must be the employee’s colleagues, that is, work at the same enterprise. According to their testimony, the duration of work should not be longer than that established by law when assigning a pension. It is permissible for a witness to provide his testimony in writing if he is unable to testify for objective reasons, for example, in case of illness. In a situation where the Pension Fund decides not to take into account length of service based on testimony, then citizens can resolve this issue through the court.

How is work experience confirmed through the court?

Since 1996 Russia has introduced a system of personal records of all employees, for the maintenance of which the Pension Fund is responsible. But until 1996 There was no unified pension record of employees, therefore, if a citizen loses his work book, he can confirm his length of service only through the judicial authorities. Before going to court, you will need to prepare the necessary documentation and evidence:

• Statement of claim.
• Personal documents.
• Witness's testimonies.
• Documentation directly or indirectly confirming the fact of work at the enterprise at such and such a time.

Proof

If the person applying for a pension benefit does not have a work record, the following types of documents confirming work experience can be used:

• employment contracts concluded at the person’s place of work,
• certified certificates issued by the HR department of enterprises,
• certified extracts from orders (on appointment/transfer/dismissal),
• documents confirming the calculation and payment of wages to a person at the place of work,
• certificates from government departments regarding payment of insurance premiums and taxes,
• if the citizen was an individual entrepreneur and carried out activities under a special tax regime - UTII, then a certificate of payment of taxes from the territorial body of the Federal Tax Service of Russia,
• certificates from military institutions where the person served,
• certificates from the Social Insurance Fund for the period when the person received benefits due to temporary disability,
• documents from the Employment Center for the relevant periods,
• documents confirming cash payments to employees,
• various characteristics of a citizen from the place of performance of labor functions.

Note! The same documents can serve as the basis for proof if the work book contains inaccuracies in filling out information about the place of work, time, date of dismissal, etc.

Statement of claim for confirmation of experience

The restoration of lost work experience is within the jurisdiction of district or city courts - this is where the application should be submitted. The application is either written by hand or compiled on a computer and then printed on a printer. The structure of the statement is as follows:

1. In the upper right corner, a “header” is filled in, where the name of the court and the plaintiff’s passport details are indicated.
2. The main text contains information about the enterprise where the applicant worked. Hours of work and position he held.
3. Requirements for the court. In this case, please establish the fact of the length of service from the date of hiring to the date of dismissal.
4. The following is a list of documents and certificates attached to the application.
5. The application is certified by the personal signature of the submitter, and the date of its preparation is indicated.

Go to court.

Sometimes the Pension Fund refuses to count certain periods of work into the work (insurance) length of service for a future pensioner. As a reason, the Pension Fund refers to the insufficiency of the documents and information provided, or the presence of errors in them, for example, in the name of the employer. In this case, the citizen has the right to file a claim in court against the territorial body of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation.

The statement of claim must be accompanied by documents confirming your position. Such documents may include:

• employment contract;
• financial documents confirming payment of wages to the employee;
• local regulations of the employer, which contain information about employees:
• other documents.

Also in court, the plaintiff can refer to witness testimony.

Very often, the court takes the side of the future pensioner and overturns the decisions of the Pension Fund, after which the citizen is assigned a pension taking into account the disputed period of work.

Further actions

All legal proceedings, according to the procedural legislation of the Russian Federation, are adversarial in nature. That is, in order to make a decision in favor of the applicant, a strong evidence base must be presented to the judge’s attention. In this situation, this may be indirect documentary evidence or testimony. Based on the results of the consideration, the judge makes a decision to satisfy the claim for reinstatement of length of service or to reject it.

If a positive decision is made, the plaintiff submits a copy of it to the territorial branch of the Pension Fund, on the basis of which the employees make adjustments to the citizen’s personal data.

Features of confirmation of experience during the liquidation of an organization

Another difficulty arises for citizens when they need to confirm their work experience in a defunct organization. To do this, you should contact the tax authorities. Where to find out whether a closed organization has a legal successor. It is also possible that the company merged with another organization. In such a situation, all archival documentation should be located in these organizations.

If there is no successor company, data on former employees should be in the archive. Depending on the level of subordination of the enterprise, all its documentation during liquidation is transferred to the municipal or regional archive. Information about where all the archival papers of the closed enterprise were transferred can be obtained from the same tax service.

If the required documents are missing

At the beginning of their working lives, citizens, as a rule, do not think about the period of their lives when it will be time to retire. Moreover, many years pass during which documents can be lost or destroyed, including due to unforeseen circumstances.

If it is not possible to confirm any period of work experience, it will certainly be deducted, and the amount of pension benefits will be assigned without taking into account the specified period of working time.

Therefore, future retirees are required to know how to protect their interests in these situations.

How to find out your work experience?

The first thing that citizens planning to retire need to keep in mind is the state of their personal account in the Russian Pension Fund. It is necessary to make sure that all periods of performance of the labor function are taken into account.

Ways to obtain an extract:

• through the official portal “State Services”,
• official website of the Russian Pension Fund,
• by personally contacting the relevant authority in your region,
• at the employer.

Remember! If errors are found in the information, you must immediately contact the territorial department of the Pension Fund, where the latter, for its part, initiates a search for the requested information.

Confirmation of Soviet work experience

Another relevant case is how to confirm the presence of work experience from Soviet times, when there was neither a modern pension system nor personal registration of citizens. The only way to confirm this is an entry in the work book, or other documents from the place of previous work. If documents are lost, recognition of experience through the courts will be required.

To do this, you will need to collect the available evidence, including indirect documents and testimony of witnesses who previously worked with the applicant at the same enterprise. For example, until 1991 the only mandatory payments collected from every working citizen were contributions to state social insurance. Of course, it is difficult to find in the archives documentary evidence of payments made thirty years ago, but it is worth trying. In this case, you will receive 100% confirmation of work experience during Soviet times.

What to do if the archive does not have the necessary documents?

Working throughout their lives, few citizens care about the safety of all documents, relying on the integrity of human resources departments and personalized records.
However, there are often cases when it comes to applying for a pension and a lack of documents confirming work experience is discovered. This affects the amount of the pension, so potential retirees need to know how to solve the problem. The impossibility of confirming length of service most often arises when we are talking about periods of activity of citizens when registration in the compulsory pension insurance system has not yet been legalized.

Future retirees need to have information about the status of their personal account on the eve of retirement in order to make sure that all periods of working activity are reflected in it. Options for obtaining information from a personal personal account:

• on the website of government services or the Pension Fund of Russia;
• visit to the nearest PF branch in your locality;
• at the place of work (in this case, the employer can familiarize the employee with data about employees, which he transfers to the personalized accounting authorities).

If a citizen discovers that the personal account does not contain the data that is written in the work book, he needs to immediately contact the Pension Fund. Pension fund employees, in turn, also organize a search for lost information.