MOSCOW, February 7 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s new Labour Code should offer incentives to highly-qualified labour force, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, who is running for Russian president, stated on Tuesday.
He pointed out that a working day in Russia is by 20 percent shorter than in the United States, and the retirement age is by 15 years less. “A new Labour Code should be well-balanced,” he said. In his words, the current Labour Code protects unqualified workforce, not creative personnel.
Prokhorov, who chairs the Labour market and personnel strategies committee of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, said his committee never proposed to legalize a 60-hour working week. “We have never proposed such a thing, all we proposed was quite simple: if a person wants to work more at his workplace for additional pay, the Labour Code should allow that,” he said.
According to Prokhorov, his committee jointly with the government and social organizations are working on a new list of professions. “The current list has 7,000 professions,” he said and added that this list is to be reduced to 500-700. Big sums are spent, in his words, to train specialists in these professions and if the list is shortened the money will be used more efficiently.
Labour relations in a new economic environment are a competitive privilege of any country. Today, each of Russia’s workers “is not competing with his or her neighbor, he or she is competing with the Chinese, with Europeans or with Americans,” he said. “So, let us see how competitive our Labour Code is.”