How to restore a work book in the Russian Federation if it is lost: if the company is liquidated, what to do if there is a photocopy, registration of a duplicate and certificate Legal advice

Procedure

To restore the TC you will need the following papers:

An empty TC and an insert for it, if necessary.
Employment contracts from previous places of work.
Orders of dismissal, appointment of an employee, etc.
Certificate from the Pension Fund of Russia.

It’s good if a person has a copy of his work record. It is required to be certified by the HR department each time you change jobs.

The first step to restore a document is to draw up an application to the employer. The law does not provide clear instructions on how to prepare this application. It is drawn up in free form. Sent to the HR department of the last place of work. The new work book is issued by the employer on the basis of documents provided by the employee. You can confirm your activities and length of service using employment contracts and appointment orders. You can obtain documents from your previous places of work. To confirm your work experience you will need a certificate from the Pension Fund.

IMPORTANT! To confirm your experience, you will need original documents.

ATTENTION! A person can take care to simplify the recovery up front. To do this, you will need a copy of the work book, certified in accordance with all the rules. If the document is certified, the entries from the copy are simply transferred to a new book. The employee will not have to run around to their former places of work. This is the best option, since, with a lot of experience, not all records can be restored. Some jobs may simply no longer exist, as companies tend to close.

What to do if your work book is lost - instructions for quickly restoring your work record

Is it worth restoring a lost work book yourself?

A work record book as such may have different values. If it contains one record of several months of experience, then you hardly need to worry about its loss. It’s a completely different matter if the work book reflects ten, twenty, thirty years of work experience... In this case, it is necessary to restore the document.

According to labor law, if your work record is lost, you have the right to contact your last employer with a request to issue a duplicate of your work record. Often, if the dismissal went smoothly and the relationship with the employer is good, a personal request with an attached written statement is sufficient.

If you assume that the employer may, for some reason, delay the process or ignore your appeal, then you should approach the issue with the utmost seriousness, formalizing everything. Send your application by registered mail with acknowledgment of receipt by the addressee. Faced with such a request, the employer will not have the opportunity to shelve it.

By issuing a duplicate of a lost work book, the employer will make an entry in it about the restoration of the length of service, which has documentary evidence. But if you don’t have documents on hand confirming your actual experience, you’ll have to worry about getting them.

It is precisely for such situations that it is advisable to have a certified copy of the work book. But how to restore a lost work book if a duplicate was not created in advance? Unfortunately, you will have to visit all those institutions and organizations in which you accumulated your experience, collecting all kinds of documents, orders, and extracts.

You often have to deal with the fact that your old place of work no longer exists - in such a situation, you should contact the state archives of the locality where the company where you previously worked was registered.

The employer has lost his work book - who should restore it?

There are two types of situations and, accordingly, two courses of action if a personnel officer has lost his work book.

The first is when this happens unintentionally due to force majeure incidents, such as a fire in the office or other emergency situations, when the employer actually lost the work book and cannot return it to you.

In the second case, the employer simply does not want to return the document for any reason. If personnel officers have lost their work book at work, then the algorithm of actions is exactly the same as for self-recovery, but with the nuance that all related concerns fall solely on the shoulders of the employer. As a rule, this is entrusted to a specific person representing the organization.

If the employer does not hand over the work book due to malicious intent, then it is necessary to go to court. According to Article 234 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employer is not only obliged to hand over the document, but also to compensate for each day of delay in the amount of the average salary.

You can also claim compensation for moral damages and cover all expenses that you encountered in the process of restoring your work record.

If a potential employee has lost his work record, instructions for the HR department.

What to do if a potential employee has lost his work record? There are two ways out of the situation - you can create a new document or explain to an applicant who has lost his work book how to restore it and what is the procedure for obtaining a duplicate.

The provisions of the Labor Code allow the employer to issue a new work book to an employee being hired. In this case, it does not matter for what reason the applicant does not have a document; if an employee has lost his work book, then an application written on his behalf with a request for issue is sufficient. The statement, however, must indicate the reason for the loss.

It is unacceptable to make entries in the new work book about the employee’s previous places of work. Such powers are possessed only by the personnel department of the organization in which the newly hired employee’s seniority accumulated. All these points must be explained to the employee who lost the document.

There are cases when a person applying for a job provides false documents to the HR department or declares that for some reason he does not have a work book. This may happen if the applicant is required to have work experience in the relevant specialty, when in fact he does not have it. In addition, the motivation may lie in the desire to hide facts of unfair treatment of previous work, manifested in absenteeism, drunkenness or various penalties from the employer, up to and including dismissal.

As a rule, a personnel officer can easily verify the accuracy of information about a previous place of work by contacting the potential employee’s former employer using the contacts indicated in the applicant’s resume. If the fact of deception is confirmed, then in accordance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employee can be legally dismissed.

Restoring a book through the Pension Fund of Russia

Restoring a document through the Pension Fund is the easiest option. This is a free and quick procedure. Let's look at the recovery steps:

Drawing up an application for restoration of the Labor Code.
Submitting an application in person or by registered mail.
After 10 days, the Pension Fund sends a response indicating the period of the employee’s work, his length of service and the companies in which the person worked.

IMPORTANT! Restoration through the Pension Fund is a method that has limitations. Personal records in the fund began to be kept relatively recently, and therefore not all data can be obtained this way. In particular, the Pension Fund stores information only for the last five years.

Results

Now you know the answer to the question of how to restore your work book - if it is lost . We recommend that you treat such important documents with care and pay attention to whether the employer stores work records properly (in a separate safe). We also advise you to collect and store in a safe place employment contracts with each company in which you worked.

We also advise you to read the article “Instructions for filling out work books.”
You can find more complete information on the topic in ConsultantPlus. Free trial access to the system for 2 days.

Restoration through the state archive

This method is relevant in the following circumstances:

Previous places of work are closed.
The Pension Fund does not have the required information.

In all other situations, it makes sense to use other methods, since restoration through an archive is a labor-intensive procedure. To obtain the required information, you must submit a written request. However, you need to be prepared for the fact that the answer will not come soon.

IMPORTANT! If an employee worked on a rotational basis, then requests must be sent to regional archives.

Where to contact?

You can contact the Pension Fund.

In case of loss of a work record, you can contact various authorities - depending on how exactly the record book was lost, as well as depending on the employee’s length of service. Here are some examples:

if the work report was flooded with coffee and the employee worked for the same company throughout his entire career, then restoring the document in this situation is quite simple. You should contact your employer with a request to issue a duplicate. After the appropriate application, the employer will issue a new employment record with a record of employment;
if the work document was lost and could not be found, and the employee changed many places of work, then in this case you will have to work hard to get the document in its original form.

Loss of document by employer

If the work book was lost by the employer, then it is he who bears the responsibility for restoration. For example, if there is a massive loss of books, the employer collects a commission to determine the length of service of all employees. It includes only non-interested persons:

employees of other departments;
trade union members;
representatives of the executive branch.

If exact information about the employee’s place of work is not available, the information must be confirmed by two witnesses. Based on the results of the work performed, a report is drawn up. Paragraph 34 of the Ordinance mentioned earlier indicates the use of the act in restoration.

The law does not contain precise instructions regarding actions to be taken if an employer loses a document. If a large number of books are lost, the organization may be fined for improper storage under the Code of Administrative Offenses. If a company has lost a document and therefore cannot issue it when an employee is dismissed, the latter may request compensation.

ATTENTION! If the document of one employee is lost, the employer takes standard actions: contacts the Pension Fund, a state fund.

How to restore a work record through the Pension Fund?

The Pension Fund stores data on the work experience of citizens. Until 2002, such information was collected by the fund on the basis of entries in work books - requests were sent to employers asking them to fill out information about the insured person’s work experience in the SZV-K form. Since 2002, the fund has provided individual pension accounting information using the SZI-5 form.

To create a duplicate work book with the help of the Pension Fund, you need to write a statement about the loss of the work book and submit it to the fund branch at your place of residence. Within 10 days, the Pension Fund will provide a duplicate based on its own data (Resolution of the Board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation dated July 31, 2006 No. 192p).

It should be taken into account that if you worked at the enterprise unofficially, the Pension Fund will not have information about such place of work. Remember this when you agree to informal employment—this period of time will not be included in the length of service for calculating your pension.

Employee actions

If an employee has suspicions that the employer lost the document intentionally, he can contact the Labor Inspectorate. It makes sense to go to court only if the employee is sure that the organization deliberately lost the document. You can go to the court under the following circumstances:

The employer refuses to restore the book without explanation.
The employer denies the fact of employing the citizen.

The court obliges the company to take care of issuing a duplicate.

ATTENTION! The court is a last resort, since the measure involves wasting time and drawing up a claim. There is no need to pay a fee, since cases related to the Labor Code are not subject to fees.

What to do if you lose your work book?

It is necessary to find out whose fault the work was lost.

Loss of employment is unpleasant. It’s especially unpleasant if it happened through someone else’s fault. In the workplace, loss of employment can happen for various reasons:

Due to an emergency - fire, building collapse, etc.;
Due to the negligent attitude of employees, the book was stolen, it ended up with other documents, or was mistakenly thrown away;
The book was damaged - by management, the personnel department or an employee. For example, coffee was spilled on it or it was accidentally torn.

In any case, if the work record is damaged, the employee should immediately notify management and begin restoring it.

Features of filling out a duplicate TC

The duplicate contains information about the total length of service in years, months and days. Specific places of work are not indicated. Only the last place of work is registered. This registration is relevant if the employee has not provided documents confirming his other places of work.

A stamp is placed on the title page of the document indicating that the book is a duplicate. You can read more about registering a duplicate work book if it is lost by following the link in this sentence.

The ease of restoring a work record depends on the specific case. If the previous employer continues its activities, and the Pension Fund has all the required data, then the procedure is relatively simple. Things get more complicated in cases where the data cannot be obtained or the former employer has been liquidated. The employee will have to go to court. During the time until a duplicate is received, it will be quite problematic to get a job. Therefore, you need to take care of receiving the document in advance. Neither the employee nor the employer should delay this.

The employer has lost his work book - who should restore it?

There are two types of situations and, accordingly, two courses of action if a personnel officer has lost his work book.

In the second case, the employer simply does not want to return the document for any reason. If personnel officers have lost their work book at work, then the algorithm of actions is exactly the same as for self-recovery , but with the nuance that all related concerns fall solely on the shoulders of the employer. As a rule, this is entrusted to a specific person representing the organization.

If the employer does not hand over the work book due to malicious intent, then it is necessary to go to court. According to Article 234 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employer is not only obliged to hand over the document, but also to compensate for each day of delay in the amount of the average salary.

You can also claim compensation for moral damages and cover all expenses that you encountered in the process of restoring your work record.