Well, I already said that there is no “precarious” problem in Russia. It is not so difficult to find a job with permanent contract, to have regular salary, regular holidays etc.
But from the other side few sociologists already wrote that it is just different kind of precarious work in Russia.
Let me explain.
- That will be a really big fine for Russian company, if you working for it more than 3 months with temporary contract. That is the reason why everyone has permanent contract with all of “social protection”
- There are still a lot of black salary in the labor market, especially in crisis times like today. Nothing special to explain – just little part of people believes in pension system, so they agree with employee to have minimal official salary and to get paid unofficial.
- From the other hand – you can be fired unpredictable at the moment and there aren’t a lot of chances that you will defend your rights in the court. Just because of laws are still not completely provided.
So we can say that in official statistics Russian labor market hasn’t any problems with precariat. In fact – it is just different form of it.
To be honest there is not a big problem with unemployment – people can find work without so big problems like in Europe. But most of them still will be precarious.
Three years ago Olga Golodets, vice-premier of Russian government said that there 38 millions of people who “works unclear there exactly”. So there are around 38 millions people, who are officially unemployed or have temporary contracts. I am sure that most of them are working but don’t have official salary. Threatening amount, isn’t it?
In my opinion, the biggest problem – people agree with that role. I mean, there are no conversations about permanent or temporary contracts, no public discussions or popular articles and it is totally normal for people to be in precarious class. In that case I’m thinking that they don’t need any help, until they agree.
So at the moment precarious work is not a big problem for Russian workers – until it will be normal not to be part of official labor market, there won’t be any social tension.
But that situation can’t work infinitely. Difference between Russia in Europe is just in different steps – European workers started to cooperate to defend their rights, and Russian workers just started to think about it. It is quite interesting to look on that process.
Looking for future.
Artem Chubukov
Manifestation in Moscow
4 months working without salary!
