03 May 2004 12:39
Russian region cracks down on employers who delay wage payments
[Presenter] The Saratov Region Prosecutor's Office has set about seriously tackling negligent employers who
delay paying their staff's wages. Wide-ranging checks have already seen around 50 officials lose their jobs.
Vitaliy Akinchin reports from Saratov:
[Correspondent] Saratov's Vehicle and Workers Pool No 63 lost its director not so very long ago. The
Prosecutor's Office states that the court removed the manager from the running of the enterprise because of wage
arrears. The Prosecutor's Office has the same grievance against the new director. Shipo Kucholoria has already
received an administrative penalty [a fine] for delayed wage payments. [Passage omitted]
[Correspondent] In law if a manager continues to delay wage payments even after a fine, he can be removed from his
management role for between one and three years. According to the prosecutor's office, more than 50 people have
already lost their jobs in Saratov.
[Vadim Shubunov, senior assistant to the prosecutor of Saratov's Leninskiy district] The situation gets better
when staff from the prosecutor's office are more vigorous in influencing negligent employers and wages do start to
be paid. The money is found, somehow, somewhere, and wage debts begin to be paid off.
Aleksandr Alimov, an odd-job man with the Vehicle and Workers Pool No 63, receives miserly pay and even that has been
delayed for several months. He has been managing thanks to produce from an allotment in the country. [Passage
omitted]
[Correspondent] According to a head of department at the regional Prosecutor's Office, Viktor Chernov, at least
another 25 heads of a variety of enterprises in Saratov Region could lose their jobs in the next month. Any employee, he
said, may initiate checks by the prosecutor's office.
[Viktor Chernov, head of the Saratov Region Prosecutor's Office department for complying with legislation in the
social sphere] Above all, we defend citizens' labour rights and their constitutional rights.
[Correspondent] As for managers who have already been disqualified, their names go into a special register, a data
base. Nowadays, every enterprise director is obliged to find out before hiring a manager whether that person has
previously lost a job for violating labour laws. If so and the individual is still taken on, the manager faces a fine of
1,000 minimum wages.
[RTR Russia TV] |
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