National Unity Day, which was thought up by State Duma deputies to replace the ideologically incorrect November 7 celebrations of the Revolution, has yet to become a bona fide national holiday. People have trouble understanding who united with whom and why. But nonetheless one can find a reason to toss back a drink, after all, it’s autumn and cold and wet outside.
Experts of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on the eve of the holiday announced that they had prepared some amendments to the Labor Code. They propose increasing the maximum number of hours a work is allowed to work in a week to 60 as well as allowing open-ended employment agreements to be replaced by term contracts. They also call for an expansion of the practice of working outside the office, as this makes it impossible to control how many hours an employee spends carrying out the boss’s orders. Perhaps more and perhaps less. But something tells me that this will not lead to more free time for employees, and overtime work will not be compensated.
Another innovation proposed by the organization’s committee on the labor market and personnel strategy headed by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is to give employers the right to unilaterally alter labor agreements due to “reasons of an economic nature.”
Documents signed between employers and employees will not limit the employer. He can give his word and then take it back. The time stipulated for notifying an employee of changes in his contract will be reduced from two months to one month, in order not to give him enough time to find a new job after finding out about the changes.
In general, the idea of returning to a 10-hour workday (or a 12-hour workday if Saturday remains a day off) seems like a cruel joke, as the 8-hour workday was something that most European countries adopted nearly one hundred years ago. But some people apparently found this idea appealing.
For example, the chief doctor of the Russian Federation Gennady Onischenko, whose job it is to care about the life and work conditions of Russians, did not find anything wrong with the 60-hour workweek. Onischenko said that the main thing was that results not be impacted, i.e., so that people working 10- or 12-hour workdays did not start working less intensively for their bosses. This of course should be the highest priority for the country’s chief doctor. But to be just, we should note that Onischenko said some professions he could make exceptions. In particular, he named two professions – miners and psychiatrists.
However, Onischenko was a little too quick in expressing his solidarity with Prokhorov. Other state officials preferred to keep silent on these initiatives, which provoked public outrage. The reaction was so great that the experts were forced to justify themselves, explaining that they had been misunderstood. But their explanation hasn’t made things any better.
Deputy head of the union Fedor Prokopov said that according to the newly proposed rules, a worker cannot be forced to work for any particular employer more than 40 hours per week, and the extra 20 hours will only be voluntary. But he didn’t explain why a worker would voluntarily decline the overtime pay due for the extra hours. Perhaps out of pity embattled capitalism or even for the sake of national unity.
It is unlikely that the government will decide to adopt such unpopular and clearly barbarous laws, which demonstrate that the ruling elite sees no other economic development opportunities than greater exploitation of workers. What new technologies and innovations?! But even if Prokhorov’s project is laid to rest, it has already demonstrated the quality of our ruling class and its lack of ability to think of beyond the ideas of the distant past, when production amounted to squeezing as much possible from the worker while paying as little as possible. It’s unlikely that they will have much success in modernization efforts…
Perhaps the fuss about the 60-hour workweek was just a red herring to so that journalists would distract public attention from other less scandalous but no less important amendments restricting the rights of employees, such as the term contracts. However, the public’s response was so great that now any proposals from the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs will now been seen as the enemy’s plan of attack.
