Perm ИСИТО
The Perm krai trade union federation
General information
The Perm krai trade union council (kraisovprof) is the successor to the Perm oblast trade union council created in November 1948 according to the decision of the plenum of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS). At the present time the kraisovprof unites 21 territorial committees of branch trade unions and in addition services 24 primary organizations. In each of the territories of the krai there are inter-branch trade-union associations - trade union coordinating councils.
The kraisovprof has 7 departments: organizational, social and economic, legal, financial, general, a department for humanitarian activity, technical work inspection, and also an information-analytical center. Apart from this a number of commissions operate on a permanent basis: on mass-organizational work and personnel selection, on social-labour relations and economic work, on social guarantees and mass-cultural work, on labour safety and ecology, on the budget and financial policy, on rule-making activity and legal work, on trade union property. The size of the apparatus has been gradually reduced. While in 2000 there were 43 employees, now only 35 people work here.
Legal protection of interests of workers by specialists of the Perm kraisovprof
A legal department has been created to provide legal assistance to member organizations. The department has only two staff (the head and his deputy) though in the list of staff until recently there were five posts. Two young employees left owing to low earnings and one post was eliminated.
The basic directions of activity of the department are:
- Monitoring the observance of current legislation by employers;
- Protection of members of the trade union and trade-union activists;
- Creation of court practice as one of the kinds of lawmaking;
- Carrying out of examination of legal documents and rule-making activity;
- Training trade-union activists;
- Carrying out of scientific-practical conferences for the legal services of trade unions.
Increasing the efficiency of legal work has been declared to be the major priority by the chairman of the regional trade union federation. With this aim they have set themselves the task of reorganization of legal inspection. The creation and development of local sections of the inspectorate which should operate in close connection with coordination councils and the legal services of the branch trade unions are planned. Apart from this, the creation of a special group of lawyers responsible for legislative work is planned. Thus, there will be a deepening of specialization of trade-union lawyers, and supervising, consulting and law-making functions will be divided.
The idea of reorganization of legal work of the Perm regional trade union federation is not new. Proposals for the creation of a unified legal service including representatives of the legal services of the branch trade unions had already been put forward in the past. However, this idea was not realized, as the organizational and financial bases of the unified service were uncertain. A similar situation has also developed with the new proposal for reorganization.
The control of observance of labour legislation
The basic forms of monitoring the observance of labour legislation are checks at enterprises, the analysis of collective agreements and other statutory acts of the organizations. Analysis shows that checks at the enterprises are a pretty rare practice in the activity of the lawyers of the kraisovprof. In 2006 they carried out only 8 (in 2005 - 11). During checks 31 infringements (2005 – 34) were revealed. The basic restriction on the expansion of this activity is the lack of staff: «we cannot capture everything, none of us has the time» (from interview); and also maintenance of their "sovereignty" of the branch trade unions: «enterprises are a prerogative of the obkoms … almost all our enterprises belong to a trade union territorial organization, and they are engaged in this … it is their business, and we cannot » (from interview).
Examination of the contents of concluded collective agreements, and also statutory acts of the enterprises has been carried out in the kraisovprof since 2000. Like the checks on enterprises, this work cannot be called large-scale, it is carried out incidentally: "But, certainly, we can not capture all these collective agreements, there are so many, they are so large. But those which they bring, we look through. On the basis of this they draw some conclusions, then write us a note, that something is revealed there, that there it is possible to add or subtract" (from interview). Moreover, collective agreements are usually sent to the kraisovprof after they have already been adopted, basically - together with reports i.e. when it is already not possible to affect their contents.
Rule-making activity
Development of draft laws regulating payment of wages in Perm krai
The strategy of the krai trade union council to achieve "a decent level» wages for workers, determined by a decision of Plenum (December, 2004), provides for the development of proposals for the modification of and additions to the legislation, directed at the improvement of the regulation of a payment at the regional level.
During 2005, the social and economic and legal departments of the kraisovprof developed «Concepts of regulation of payment in the Perm oblast». However, this work has remained uncompleted, in connection with the reorganization of the authorities: «the Concept has been almost developed, and then suspended in general, since the Labour Department was liquidated» (from interview).
In 2006, based on the federal legislation which provides the possibility of the adoption by subjects of the Russian Federation of their own laws establishing higher minimum wages than those established in federal law, and also the experience of other regions, the trade unions of the krai have initiated and prepared drafts of laws «On the regulation of payment in Perm krai» and «On the minimum wage in Perm krai » (similar laws have been adopted in Volgograd and Moscow oblasts). Adoption of these laws would radically expand the boundaries of the centralized regulation of wages (application of laws to all organizations, their branches and the representatives located in the territory of region) and, in the long term, - realization of the long established aim of trade-union activity - achievement of a minimum wage at the level of the subsistence minimum.
As the basic aims of the adoption of the law «On the regulation of payment in Perm krai», the kraisovprof has designated the following positions:
l step-by-step alignment of the guaranteed minimum wage with the subsistence minimum in the territory of Perm krai;
l carrying out of a corresponding tax policy;
l indexation of wages to the growth of consumer prices;
l regulation of payment in state and municipal organizations;
l establishment of a method of applying the Uniform Tariff Scale to the payment of workers in budgetary branches and establishment for these branches of pay scales (salaries);
l establishment of the minimal and increased sizes of additional payments and increases;
l use of uniform recommendations for systems of payment of workers of the budgetary sphere authorized by the Russian tripartite commission.
As a whole the draft law «On the regulation of payment in Perm krai» duplicates many positions of the Labour code and other federal laws. However, a number of positions represent an attempt to develop the federal legislation in the direction of increasing the role of agreements at various levels in the regulation of payment, and also provision for the protection of the wages of the worker. For example, the draft provided that the regional tripartite agreement establishes a uniform order of indexation of wages (item 6), the mechanism for definition of the coefficient to be applied to the minimum wage, and the proportion of the guaranteed part of wages (item 8). A norm has been introduced according to which the share of the wages paid under tariff rates should be not less than 60-70 % of the general size of wages (item 7).
In support of the draft law the kraisovprof has adopted an appeal to deputies of the Legislative assembly with the proposal to develop a policy for the regulation of the level of payment and development of corresponding statutory acts. The trade-union bill has been considered at a session of the committee on social policy and human rights. The decision «was adopted to recommend to the regional administration to develop for the parties to social partnership the recommendation about inclusion in regional branch and territorial agreements and collective agreements of the obligations to adopt a step-by-step approach of the minimum wage up to the level of the adult subsistence and about the expansion of other social and legal guarantees of labour rights, including the right to decent wages». However, the administration of the krai rejected this bill, referring to the absence of necessary laws at the federal level.
In one of the first variants of the draft law «On the size of the minimum wage in Perm krai» the guarantee that payment should not be below the level of the subsistence minimum was established. However, in the judgment of the staff of the kraisovprof themselves, the immediate achievement of this norm by all organizations in the territory of the krai now is simply not realistic. Therefore a more flexible mechanism has been proposed: the establishment in the region of the factor raising wages towards the level of the minimum wage established at the federal level (item 3). It was proposed that the size of the factor should be reviewed annually in view of the opinion of the tripartite commission (item 4).
As trade unions have lost their rights of legislative initiative, the draft law «On the size of the minimum wage in Perm krai» was taken by the kraisovprof for consideration by the regional tripartite commission with the proposal to create a working group for study and the subsequent submission of the draft law to the Legislative Assembly. However this attempt turned out to be unsuccessful. Both employers and the administration drew a negative conclusion on the bill, having noted the untimeliness of its submission to the representative body of the krai.
In the conclusion received from the employers, contradictions with the federal legislation (regarding the introduction of the mechanism of calculation, instead of the fixed size of the regional minimum payment, and also the establishment of the maximal size of payment), and inattention to features of the regulation of payment in the affiliated organizations (branches) of international vertically integrated companies were specified.
The central administrative board for financial and tax policy of Perm oblast also specified a number of discrepancies of the trade-union bill to the norms of federal legislation. Apart from the absence of an economic substantiation of the proposed draft, sources of indemnification for additional costs to budgets of various levels was noted.
As a result of discussion at a meeting of the tripartite commission (August, 2006) the decision was adopted to return the trade-union draft laws for revision and to return to their consideration the following year. However, the plan of work of the regional tripartite commission for 2007 does not include a corresponding question - in the development of the draft laws an indefinite pause has arisen.
Work on the law continued in 2007. On the basis of an agreement with the United Russia fraction of deputies in the regional parliament the law, with a changed name (now it is ‘On the protection of wages in Perm’ Krai’) has been included in the plan for consideration by legislators in 2008.
The regional program « Safe work in budgetary organizations »
By virtue of the limited opportunities of influence on private enterprises in the realization of public control over working conditions, technical inspectors of the kraisovprof put the main emphasis on budgetary organizations. Checks carried out have revealed numerous infringements of labour health and safety precautions. It has been revealed, that expenditure on measures to prevent industrial injury and the maintenance of safe working conditions have far from been carried out in full. It has turned out, that expenditures on these purposes are not protected by the budget: «there is no separate expenditure line and expenditure for labour safety is either according to the residual principle, or in general is not carried out at all » (from interview).
The technical inspectors of the kraisovprof, together with the health workers’ obkom have carried out an inspection of medical establishments. A special questionnaire including questions to the head physician and chairman of the trade union committee has been developed. The research which has been carried out in the majority of districts of the krai has revealed the internal structure of expenditure on the protection and improvement of working conditions, and also a huge deficiency of money for these purposes: «we looked to see how much was spent on means of protection, passage of physical examinations, training those responsible, dietetic therapy … and, you know, they will construct a building and will report that working conditions have improved … but it turned out that in reality they only spend 9% of what is necessary» (from interview).
The opportunity to initiate mass checks of labour safety conditions in the budgetary sphere is considered as an extreme and very unsatisfactory variant of the resolution of the problem. The kraisovprof, and the branch obkoms, and primary organisations all understand that heads of establishments are "between two fires". Representatives of the trade-union activists believe that checks block the work of budgetary establishments, will lead to penalties for the heads, but will not have the required effect. Therefore, for the kraisovprof a more traditional way of resolving the problem has been chosen. In June, 2006 at a meeting of the permanent commission of the kraisovprof on labour safety and ecology, it was decided to appeal to the governor and deputies of the Legislative assembly with the demand to assign money for the improvement of conditions and labour safety. The purpose of the appeal was to insert financing of corresponding actions into the regional budget for 2007. Apart from this, the kraisovprof took the initiative to develop a regional targeted programme “Safe work in budgetary organizations» to plan concrete actions directed at ensuring safety and the improvement of working conditions, and - the main thing - «to receive financial guarantees of their execution”.