Fighters for unemployment

Moscow authorities hope to make the conditions for hiring migrants impossible for employers

It seems that the capital's authorities are preparing new administrative obstacles for hiring migrant workers for city employers who have not yet had time to recover from a sharp reduction in quotas for foreign labor this year . Yesterday, at a regular meeting of the Moscow government, city officials approved a draft law on employment, in which they want to secure the right to “define requirements for employers to ensure material, medical, housing and other social guarantees” when hiring foreigners and establish “the procedure and mechanism for implementing checks" on the fulfillment of these obligations.

According to the developer of the document, head of the department of the state employment service of the city of Moscow Sergei Dudnikov, the capital’s authorities hastened to take advantage of the recently expanded powers of the regions in the field of labor relations and ensuring employment of the population, expanded by federal legislation. In general, according to the developers, the law should be of a social nature, providing additional preferences for native city residents in the Moscow labor market. In particular, the bill provides for compensation for urban unemployed transport costs while looking for work, additional payments to unemployment benefits and financial assistance, as well as quotas for jobs in city enterprises for people with disabilities and other vulnerable segments of the population. In addition, in order to comply with the “priority provision of the right of Moscow residents to occupy vacant positions,” the bill assumes that city authorities will form a quota based not only on the need of the city economy for additional labor resources, but also on the ability of employers to provide migrants with housing and other social conditions . According to the document, the capital’s government will determine the criteria for housing, medical and social compliance of the conditions for hiring foreigners with officials’ ideas about decent work, as well as methods of monitoring their compliance, according to the document. However, the developers did not hide that behind the norm, which de jure provides “decent work for guest workers,” de facto lies an attempt to establish total control over entrepreneurs and limit their ability to use migrant labor even within the current quotas. As Alexei Alexandrov, chairman of the Moscow government’s committee of interregional relations and national policy, told a Vremya Novostey correspondent, officials are not satisfied that the city has too low an unemployment rate for native Muscovites. “There should be a small percentage of unemployment; competition in the labor market is better than the excess of cheap labor due to low-skilled migrants, which we have now,” said Mr. Alexandrov. Thus, according to the Moscow department of the state employment service, on average the number of unemployed in the metropolis at the moment is only 0.4% of the total working population of the capital, while world practice shows that the norm is 5-6%. In addition, more than half of unemployed Muscovites are people with higher education, “who have a different idea of ​​decent wages than newcomers.” “The influx of foreigners by 1.5% of the working-age indigenous population reduces the level of wages by 1%,” added Mr. Alexandrov.

However, both city deputies and representatives of the Moscow Confederation of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (MCIE), loyal to the capital authorities, noted that in terms of promoting employment for the indigenous population of the capital, the document is rather “declarative in nature.” Thus, according to the chairman of the commission on social policy and labor relations of the Moscow City Duma, Mikhail Antontsev, most of the social obligations that the city undertakes according to the project do not yet have a financial basis. The novelties of the bill, which impose housing, medical and other social obligations to migrants on capital enterprises, according to Olga Terenteva, deputy chairman of the ICIE, completely establish “unreasonable advantages for foreigners.” “Under modern living conditions, this is simply unlawful. Few employers can afford to provide housing for local workers, let alone migrants,” Ms. Terentyeva told Vremya Novostei. However, representatives of the Moscow tripartite commission for regulating social and labor relations will have to submit their comments to the Moscow City Duma. Despite criticism from the director of the department of social development and environmental protection of the Russian government, Sergei Kalashnikov, who considered a third of the entire document to be contrary to federal legislation, the Moscow government accepted the project as a basis, and after three weeks allotted for amendments, it should go to the City Duma.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO