Northern low

The Supreme Court legalized savings on bonuses

Trade unions failed to get the Supreme Court to change the scheme for calculating the so-called northern bonuses paid in a number of Russian regions for work in difficult natural conditions. At the end of last week, the Supreme Court put an end to the disputes that had been going on for the past few years, including in the court itself, which made contradictory rulings.

The judges ruled that the established practice in many regions, when the bonus “for the North” was paid by employers not in excess of the minimum wage (minimum wage), but was included in it, does not contradict labor legislation. Representatives of trade unions believe that such a clear reluctance of the highest court to legitimize the rights of employees of northern enterprises to individual additional payments is explained by the desire to support business and regional budgets - because otherwise, the payrolls of several million people would have to be rewritten at once.

The legislation of our country, dating back to Soviet times, provides for two types of northern bonuses. This can be either a certain coefficient depending on a specific geographic location by which the salary is multiplied, or a percentage increase in salary, which should not exceed 80% of the salary (or 100% of the salary for the Far North regions). For low-paid workers and especially state employees from the North, this bonus was a significant increase. But after 2007, when the minimum wage was set at the federal level at 4,330 rubles, this minimum salary turned out to be even higher than the salaries at a number of enterprises and institutions in the Northern regions. The revision of wages, if bonuses were accrued above the minimum wage, would require a significant increase in the wage fund. But the authorities of the northern regions, who would have to take on increased social obligations to state employees, preferred to maintain the old salaries for workers and reach the minimum established by the center with the help of allowances.

Workers from several enterprises at once began a legal battle - they believed that the authorities and managers were actually depriving them of the bonus they were entitled to under the Labor Code. At the forefront of the litigation was the trade union of the Segezha Pulp and Paper Mill (SPPM) located in Karelia. According to the employees of the plant, where the average salary was about 6 thousand rubles. per month, since the increase in the minimum wage, they have received less than two to three thousand rubles every month. It is noteworthy that at first the Segezha city court satisfied the workers’ demands, ruling that bonuses for the North should be paid in excess of the minimum wage. However, soon the Supreme Court of Karelia, which overturned the decision of the lower court and allowed the administration of the pulp and paper mill to count the salaries of workers as before. In the Supreme Court of Russia, consideration of the issue of northern bonuses has stalled. For several months, the Supreme Court postponed hearings on the claim of the workers of the Segezha Pulp and Paper Mill, intending to summarize the judicial practice in similar cases considered by the courts of the Arkhangelsk region, Perm and Transbaikalia. And on March 10, an explanation was issued by the Supreme Court, from which it followed that compensation payments for work in northern conditions should be accrued in excess. However, on June 16, the Presidium of the Supreme Court canceled this decision without any explanation. And on July 23, he finally confirmed that he supports the position of employers and is ready to support the authorities in their pursuit of budget savings. The Supreme Court did not find any violations of the Labor Code by the owners of the SPPM.

“The Supreme Court in its decision was guided not by the law, but by economic expediency,” Sergei Khramov, who represented the interests of the SPPM workers in court, told Vremya Novostey after the verdict was announced. In his opinion, by siding with the authorities and business, the Armed Forces only aggravated the social situation in areas considered northern. “People there don’t live well anyway, and they only demanded that they be paid what is required by law, and now they will simply become offended, and this offense can be expressed in unpredictable forms,” warned the trade union leader.

Vyacheslav KOZLOV