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Irina Andreeva, Tatyana Mukhina
It's time to stop using the minimum wage as a basis for calculations
It's time to stop using the minimum wage as a basis for calculations
If in developed countries the minimum wage reflects the cost of living, then in Russia it is simply a calculated value. The amount of tax benefits, the amount of social benefits, the amount of fines and much more depend on it. (Photo: Pavel Gorshkov )
At the current Russian minimum wage (minimum wage) - 83 rubles 49 kopecks - you can only feed a cat. The fact is well known. The cost of living differs from the minimum wage by tens of times. And in general, today in Russia the minimum wage is used exclusively as a certain unit of account. Tax benefits, the amount of benefits and social payments, the amount of fines for violating traffic rules, the rates of registration and license fees, etc. depend on its size.
Meanwhile, the authors of the world's most popular economics textbook - Fischer, Dornbusch and Schmalenzi - believe that the minimum wage has a different justification: "people need to be provided with an acceptable standard of living." For example, in the USA, as of March of this year, the minimum wage established by law was $5.5 per hour - the employer has no right to pay less. With a 40-hour work week, the minimum wage is approximately $880 a month - for the States this is not a lot, but you can feed yourself. So in the United States, as in other developed countries, the minimum wage truly reflects what it should: a living wage.
We owe the appearance of the minimum wage in Russia to the law “On increasing social guarantees for workers” adopted by the Supreme Council of the RSFSR in 1991. Then, from October 1, 1991, the minimum wage was set at 180 rubles “taking into account compensation in connection with the increase in retail prices” (in 1991, the author of these lines was paid a salary of 140 rubles at the plant as a young specialist), and at the same time a 40-hour wage was introduced a working week and paid vacations of 24 days for everyone (previously, workers had vacations of 15-18 working days, and the “intelligentsia” had four weeks off). In 1991, the domestic minimum wage still somehow corresponded to its essence: theoretically, it was possible to live on it (albeit, if you bought goods at state prices, which still had to be looked for). Since then, the minimum wage has been revised 16 times, and the further, the more the minimum wage lags behind the real cost of living.
The fact that the minimum wage level does not correspond to reality is understood by everyone who has at least once encountered this concept in practice. According to the Russian Labor Minister Sergei Kalashnikov, “the minimum wage of 84 rubles is too small and is simply a joke.” This spring, the State Duma even adopted a law on a gradual increase in the minimum wage. It was supposed to increase the minimum wage to 132 rubles from June 1 of this year, from October 1, 2000 - to 280, and from January 1 of next year - to 300 rubles per month.
However, the bill did not pass through the Federation Council. First Deputy Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, speaking before the senators, said that the government did not object to raising the minimum wage to 132 rubles. Moreover, in his opinion, “this measure is long overdue and is supported by the government.” But budget expenses for increasing the minimum wage to 280 rubles will already amount to 52 billion rubles, and there is no such money in the budget. As for raising the minimum wage to 300 rubles, it will cost the treasury 185 billion rubles, and this, according to Kudrin, is also not planned in the 2001 draft budget.
And yet the main problem is not the increase in the minimum wage to 200 or 300 rubles, or even the lack of money for this. It’s just time to decide: is it needed at all, and if needed, then why. It is unlikely that anyone will argue with the need to somehow define the minimum level of wages. And it must be equated to the subsistence level, and not haggle: 50 or 100 rubles more or less. But first, we need to deprive the minimum wage of its current calculation function and not tie the amount of benefits, taxes, fines and fees to it. Then there will be no need to find any additional money in the budget (especially since, contrary to popular belief, the salaries of public sector employees also do not depend on the minimum wage). The World Bank also insists on making such a decision, linking the allocation of the next tranche of a loan for reforming the social sphere in the amount of $250 million with the enactment of the relevant law.
True, in order to “untie” social and other payments from the minimum wage, you will have to revise a lot of different documents - laws, regulations, instructions, etc. By the way, the authors of the Tax Code have already taken this path and established fixed fines for certain violations, without any connection to the minimum wage. It is still unclear whether the developers of social, administrative, licensing and other types of legislation will want to follow their example. If only because they (the developers) will actually have to rewrite all existing laws anew. And not just rewrite, but wisely - by calculating a real, reality-corresponding basic starting point, based on which the size of all appropriate payments should be formed. So that payments, on the one hand, are within the capabilities of payers, and on the other, bring income to the budget.