Translated material
Victims of humanism
The "trade union" of businessmen stood up for migrant workers
Having experienced, in the first five monthsof the new migration policy, the arbitrariness of local officials when processing applications for foreign labor, Russian business is ripe for declaring its position, which differs from the official point of view of the authorities. At the end of last week, on Friday, the chairman of Business Russia, Boris Titov, made a statement that the country needs migrants at a conference on labor migration issues.“Migrants are not harmful, but useful,” said the head of one of the country’s largest unions of entrepreneurs on behalf of the non-resource segment of the market. “And not only because they fill jobs, but also because they leave most of their income in Russia.” According to him, the Russian business community is yet to experience a shortage of labor resources when the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade come true, which suggest that by 2010 the country's working-age population will, at best, decline by 2.5 million people.
However, entrepreneurs already have to face problems. First of all, the shortage of personnel hits industries in which businesses note a significant increase in “labor costs,” in particular construction, which employs up to 40% of all guest workers in the country, and processing industry and trade, which account for 30% of migrants. In addition, domestic employers note the “degradation of the Russian labor force.” “Young people are losing the skills of the previous generation, the authority of a working person, the new generation does not want to work,” Elena Nikolaeva, deputy chairman of Business Russia, shared her observations. “I am happy to hire those who are over 50 and who still have pride in their professionalism.”
Despite the declaration of demography as a priority area of Russian social policy, businessmen still insist that the problem of the lack of labor resources for stable economic development must be solved now, and not only by increasing the birth rate. Moreover, it is possible to use the resources of the CIS countries, whose citizens have retained mental, linguistic and cultural ties with Russia.
However, this resource, according to the President of the Russian Builders Association Nikolai Koshman, may become a subject of competition and a shortage. “Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which are actively under construction, are already beginning to pull the blanket of labor migration over themselves,” says Mr. Koshman. The business community is confident that in conditions of low mobility of the domestic labor force, migrants do not in any way infringe on the interests of the indigenous population, but occupy the most “non-prestigious” jobs with low requirements for the level of education. At the same time, the income of guest workers is rapidly approaching the wages of Russians, but migrants still benefit due to their ability to work and unpretentiousness in everyday life.
In this situation, representatives of medium-sized businesses, for obvious reasons, do not share the government’s general satisfaction with the implementation of the new migration policy, although the authorities were praised for their attempt to build civilized mechanisms for filling the labor market. At the same time, the business community categorically disagrees with the repressive position of officials trying to “curb and not allow” migrants into the country.
According to Ms. Nikolaeva, it was the conscientious business that openly “declared” its labor reserve that was the first to take the corruption blow of the bureaucracy. State Duma deputy Margarita Barzhanova also spoke about the corruption component of the application form for obtaining permits to use foreign labor, which assumes that it is the official who will decide how many and what profession of guest workers the entrepreneur needs. In her opinion, it is dangerous to shift questions of the economic feasibility of attracting workers from abroad to officials, without having an idea of the needs of the country as a whole.
According to Boris Titov, the application procedure causes particular difficulties for small and medium-sized businesses, where the needs for foreign labor are not so great, but may vary from time to time. Therefore, “Business Russia”, in the final resolution of the conference, proposed that government officials establish an annual quota reserve for entrepreneurs for issuing work permits in the amount of at least 50% of the regional need for attracting migrants.
In addition, the business community hopes that the state will relieve employers of the need to obtain permission to hire workers from the CIS countries and will grant an amnesty to migrants of the “pre-reform” wave who have employment contracts in their hands. For its part, business expressed its readiness to teach foreign workers the Russian language and fight illegal agencies recruiting foreign personnel, creating its own organization for attracting external labor resources for members of Business Russia.
However, judging by the speeches of representatives of official authorities, business complaints are the result of completely natural “failures and misunderstandings” in the context of the formation of a new mechanism for managing the migration flow. According to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry had to work hard to ensure that changes in legislation did not lead to friction at the interethnic and interstate level. However, officials are confident that things will not get any easier, but these difficulties are justified by the fact that the country will have “a real mechanism for regulating the migration flow based on criteria such as quantity, qualifications, profession and even country of origin.”
According to the director of the department of labor relations and state civil service of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, Alexander Safonov, the conscious migration policy of the state is just moving to the second, more complex level. At the first, legislation was formed that meets, according to the deputy head of the Federal Migration Service Vyacheslav Postavnin, “world standards of humanism.” It was possible, in particular, to equalize the rights of migrants and Russian citizens, increasing the average salary of guest workers from 200 rubles. up to 500 rub. per day, as well as forcing the employer to enter into an agreement and fulfill social and insurance obligations. Now we have to change the legal consciousness of ordinary Russian citizens and law enforcement agencies and study the country’s needs for foreigners. Therefore, refusal to apply for permits is not included in the plans of officials. As well as a migration amnesty.