Catch up with the minimum

The Moscow City Hall promises to replenish the consumer basket of state employees

In September 2008, the minimum wage in Moscow will exceed the subsistence level for the first time in many years. City officials and deputies have long complained that they are sometimes embarrassed to look their Western colleagues in the eye - in a metropolis of European level, which Moscow is considered to be in its mayor's office, the minimum wage by the same Western standards is below the poverty level.

“To survive in Moscow, it is enough to earn more than the city minimum wage (the minimum wage in Moscow since September 1, 2007 is 6,100 rubles), but this is survival in extreme poverty. By European standards, the poverty level is two times the minimum wage,” Moscow City Duma deputy Mikhail Antontsev told Vremya Novostei. The current state of the budget makes it possible to change the situation. Yesterday, the Commission on Social Policy and Labor Relations, headed by Mr. Antontsev, approved a draft law providing for an increase in salaries of public sector employees in 2008.

According to Mikhail Antontsev, in May the official minimum wage in the capital will increase to 6,800 rubles. per month, and in September it will be about 7,500 rubles. Thus, Mr. Antontsev believes, the minimum earnings of a Muscovite will first be equal to, and then completely exceed the city’s subsistence level. Today, the cost of living, established depending on the cost of a modest consumer basket, is on average 5,795 rubles, and for the working population of the capital - 6,560 rubles. per month.

True, according to the calculations of the Moscow tripartite commission for the regulation of social and labor relations, in 2007 it was possible to survive in Moscow with an income of at least 8,000 rubles. However, the capital's legislators consider the planned increase in the city minimum wage for 2008 to be very significant. And if in the spring, according to Mr. Antontsev, an increase in the minimum wage will most likely be accompanied by an actual increase in the cost of the consumer basket due to inflation, then the September increase in the minimum wage will cover all minimum consumer expenses.

The gap between the minimum wage and the subsistence level will still have to be covered by additional payments to state employees who have the first to fourth categories of the Unified Tariff Schedule. The Moscow City Duma Commission yesterday approved the mayor's office's proposal to traditionally raise the minimum UTS rate by 15% in May and increase it a second time in September - by 20%. That is, in general, by the fall, wages of the first category of the UTS should increase from the current 3,640 to 5,020 rubles. However, according to Mikhail Antontsev, state employees with the smallest salary in Moscow are now no more than 7%, and “all of them receive additional payments.”

As for holders of higher UTS tariff rates, Moscow officials have an industry-wide incentive system - for example, in relation to medical specialists, to whom the capital government was forced to introduce additional payments after raising the salaries of therapists, and foreign language teachers. “As far as I know, the head of the city’s social sector complex, Lyudmila Shvetsova, has given instructions to work on the issue of increasing salaries outside the unified social system, and now the corresponding regulations are being prepared,” Mr. Antontsev told Vremya Novostei. At the same time, he admitted that such manifestations of bureaucratic generosity are “unpredictable”, and it is necessary in general to switch to an industry-wide remuneration system with salaries and a bonus system. “The deputies, together with the Moscow mayor’s office, are now closely engaged in this,” the deputy assured.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO