Translated material
The minimum wage will be increased, but what's the point?
The other day it was announced that the Russian Government plans to increase the minimum wage (minimum wage). According to Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs Olga Golodets, this increase should occur on January 1, 2013. It is planned that the minimum wage will increase from 4.6 to 5.2 thousand rubles. At the same time, for some reason no one remembers the promises of the Government of the Russian Federation and the functionaries of United Russia that were made during the Duma and presidential campaigns. But then broadcast statements were made that during 2012 the minimum wage, they say, would be increased three times and would finally be equal to the subsistence level. By the way, it is worth recalling that the correspondence of the minimum wage to the subsistence level is not some good idea, but a norm enshrined in the Labor Code, which, although declared in the law, alas, was never implemented in practice. And now it turns out that the Government is not able to ensure its implementation.
The new minimum wage value of 5.2 thousand rubles is only 76% of the subsistence level (the current 4.6 thousand rubles is generally only 67%). If we take into account that the cost of living itself, determined by officials based on an extremely meager set of products and services, is shamefully low, then, I believe, it would be fair to assess the degree of effectiveness of the social policy currently being pursued in Russia as practically zero.
In Russian folklore there is such a unique genre - “boring fairy tales”. This is when the story goes in the same circle and ends with nothing. A classic example is the famous fairy tale about the white bull. So our minimum wage is like that “white bull” that wanders somewhere, but in the end never gets anywhere. Every time the minimum wage increases, officials present it to the public as an important event. Every time people are brainwashed with comments like this: “Even though the increase is small, we have moved things forward, taken a step forward, shown concern for the citizens,” etc. Then time passes, inflation makes its adjustments, and the minimum wage, which does not have a clear indexation mechanism, again begins to lag further and further behind the subsistence level. The whole situation essentially returns to normal. You can recall cases when the minimum wage was increased by 2 times (in September 2007), 1.8 times (in January 2009), but what did this really change? Yes absolutely nothing.
A JUST RUSSIA has long and consistently criticized this entire structure based on the minimum wage and subsistence level. At its core, it is meaningless and immoral. After all, it’s completely clear: the difference is small - 4.6 or 5.2 thousand rubles. It is impossible to live on either amount today. All these minimum wage games do not bring any real benefit. It is not an effective tool for fighting poverty or anything else. It doesn’t really focus on anything and doesn’t stimulate anything.
There is only one way to break the vicious circle - by decisively changing the paradigm of approaches to the sphere of remuneration and criteria for the standard of living of the population. It is necessary to introduce, as has been done in many European countries, hourly wages with certain types of increasing coefficients. Instead of the useless minimum wage and subsistence level, we must move to a system of social standards, the size of which will depend not on the voluntaristic decisions of officials, but on the general situation in the economy, the average level of wages achieved, etc.
It is clear that it is very unprofitable for the ruling elite and United Russia to abandon the “white bull” called the minimum wage. After all, the system designed to disguise the true depth of the social abyss in which a huge number of Russians find themselves will immediately collapse. It will immediately become clear, for example, that not 13.5 percent of our citizens live below the poverty line, as is believed according to official statistics, but much more. It will immediately become obvious that the same minimum wage should be at least three times higher. Nevertheless, sooner or later, we will have to decide on reforms in the field of wages. After all, the patience of the people is not unlimited. There are more and more people who have already perfectly understood everything about increasing the minimum wage, and about the cost of living, and in general about all the social policies currently being pursued in the country under the banner of building oligarchic-nomenklatura capitalism. There are fewer and fewer of those who are ready to believe the tired chatter about this, reminiscent of another boring saying: “It’s a waste of money, start over.”