Vladimir Putin speaks at meeting of FNPR General Council. Photo: RIA Novosti
As Russia continues to emerge from the crisis, it has significantly raised pensions and public sector pay and created a million new jobs. Its national unemployment rate is now down from January’s 8 and a half percent to just 7 percent.
Prime Minister Putin was dealing with these and related matters Saturday in an address to a 20th-anniversary convention of the National Federation of Independent Trade Unions.
Russia’s trade unions are vehicles of social partnership, which helped the nation avert a collapse in living standards as crisis bit. Importantly, wage arrears are largely a thing of the 90s. As of the first of this month, the national figure was even lower that on the same date in the pre-crisis year of 2007.
The government is drafting legislative amendments to stimulate compliance with occupational safety rules and tighten responsibility for neglecting them. Fines alone may go up two to ten times.