At its October 2 meeting in Moscow, the General Council of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) discussed the socioeconomic situation in the country, trade union actions, the youth policy of the FNPR, and the organization of a unified campaign for collective contracts and agreements to be concluded between workers and employers. On each of these issues the trade unions have serious complaints against the government. Hence the war of words between the trade union leaders and the government ministers who attended the meeting - Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko and Minister for Labor and Social Development Alexander Pochinok.
FNPR Chairman Mikhail Shmakov pointed out that the prosperity the government had been harping on was unrealistic. In fact, he said, the condition of Russians had worsened as compared with the crisis year of 1998, when the average monthly wage was $170, as against $130 today. He failed to mention, however, that half of working Russians received no wage at all in the year of default.
The trade unions are also dissatisfied with the sharp rise in the tariffs for the services of the natural monopolies and for housing and municipal services. According to estimates by economists, wages have gone up by a third since the beginning of the year, while tariffs for housing and municipal services have shot up by 50%. Especially hard hit have been people living in the Russian North. As Mikhail Kochnev, chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia, told Vremya, Northerners won't be able to pay the full rates for those utilities. "Northerners have no money for that, and won't have any in the near future. In the North, fuel is brought to power stations by helicopter," he complained.
In the country as a whole, wage arrears have hit the 34 billion ruble mark. What particularly infuriates the trade unions is that the incomes of enterprise directors are many times higher than workers' wages, let alone the scanty pay of workers at state unitary enterprises.
The trade unions also pointed an angry finger at the social scourges that President Vladimir Putin had singled out - drug addiction, child labor, growing crime, neglect of physical culture and sports. Garri Lysyuk, Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, told me that in the northern capital more than 3,000 juveniles were working in conditions that violate all international rules and norms of labor. "We have children who don't know how to read and write," he said. "And what has the government done with children's recreation facilities? It has rechanneled funding from out-of-town facilities to urban ones. Is it good for children to spend their holidays in town?"
Matviyenko and Pochinok were warding off the trade union leaders as best they could, citing peak payment of foreign debts next year, the enormous expenses on defense and on the judicial reform. As for the trade union leaders, they were obviously eager to score some points in the run-up to the parliamentary and presidential elections. The FNPR is set to conduct an all-Russia protest action - "For Adequate Wages and Social Guarantees" - on October 17.
We Have No Choice
Valentina Matviyenko, deputy prime minister: Is the government prepared to lend an attentive ear to the trade unions' demands?
The government has always heeded the trade unions' opinions because they reflect the views of fairly large sections of society. The fact that not all the demands of the trade unions can be met at once is another matter. We are negotiating, fulfilling the general agreement signed within the framework of a trilateral commission, and weighing the potentialities of the state budget and the economy. That is why we are carefully considering the demands of the trade unions and preparing our own proposals as to what actually can be done and within what time frame.
The trade unions propose increasing the wages of public-sector workers not by 33% as written in the budget, but by 50% from early 2003. Is this feasible?
Since December 1, 2001, the government has significantly increased the wages of public-sector workers in order to create a solid base for further wage increases. The real potentialities of the federal budget are such that we can increase wages only by 33%, and then not earlier than October 1, 2003. Unfortunately, at the moment we have no choice. Maybe after switching to the sectoral system of remuneration the government will be able to maneuver, for each ministry will then be able to independently determine the wages of its employees.
The Regions Cannot Afford To Pay Higher Wages
Alexander Pochinok, Minister for Labor and Social Development:
There have been numerous objections to a possible abolition of the single tariff scale. Why so?
These objections boil down to a demand for higher wages for public-sector employees. I agree that the higher the wages, the better. But can the government afford to raise wages today? Criticism of the government is also connected with the ratio of the minimum wage to the subsistence wage. In the course of the year to October, the real wages of public-sector employees have been decreasing, while the subsistence wage has been increasing. The trade unions therefore propose raising wages as early as May 2003. But we don't have the financial resources to do that. So we asked the Cabinet for funds. Unfortunately, the government found no extra money to cover these expenses when it deliberated its draft budget.
Can the wages of public-sector workers be raised by 50 percent?
Definitely not. The budget can only afford to raise wages by 33 percent from October 2003. It will be a different matter if extra funds can be found. But I'm worried about the regional budgets, not the federal budget, for it is the regions that will have to look for additional resources. The situation with the payment of wage arrears has more or less stabilized only now. If there is another wage rise from May, the regions won't manage to bear the new burden.
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