Work in a pandemic: working for 4 days or during all week?

Irina Mishina

The State Duma recently proposed to increase the working week to restore the economy. Communist deputy Nikolai Arefiev believes that Russians need to think not about a four-day working week, but "about an extension." “About working both on Saturday and Sunday, but pulling the country out of ruin, because everything is in complete ruin,” the deputy said. According to him, Russia is “falling apart”, and citizens are thinking “how not to work at all”.

Deputy Arefiev, obviously, is not very familiar with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and the Constitution of the country. Let us remind you that now a 40-hour working week is prescribed in the Basic Law, therefore, if the number of working days changes, the schedules should be built differently and the labor legislation should be revised. However, the deputy was silent about how the increase in the length of the working week will affect wages. In theory, a heavy load should lead to an increase in wages. But are employers and enterprises able to do this in the face of a pandemic and falling incomes?

FNPR (Federation of Independent Labour Unions of Russia) chairman Mikhail Shmakov did not ignore the communist deputy's statement. He stated that "there is a limit on overtime per year". “You have to pay twice for overtime. If you don't pay anything at all and force you to work 16 hours a day from under the gun, then this will fill the pockets of only the capitalist owners, ”added the head of the FNPR.

Besides, the deputy Arefiev is obviously not quite aware of the developments in the modern labor market. Most “do not work at all” not because they do not want to, but because the pandemic has simply left them without employment opportunities. At the end of January 2021, the number of unemployed exceeded 2.5 million, which is 3.6 times higher than a year earlier. Interestingly, unemployment hit not only people of pre-retirement age - it also affected young people. In January of this year, out of 4.3 million unemployed (according to the ILO methodology), 18.9% fell on young people under 25, which is about 810 thousand people. The share of the unemployed over the age of 50 has also increased. These are only official data, they are based on appeals to employment services and registration of citizens as unemployed. Many cite business closures and downsizing as reasons for job loss. So, the reasons for the collapse of the economy, Deputy Arefyev should have looked in the absence of real assistance to the country's economy from the state.

Talks about revising the length of the working week in Russia began in 2019. The initiator was the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev . After that, Valery Korzh, director of the labor conditions and labor protection department of the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation, named the conditions for the transition to a short working week: the salaries of employees of enterprises should not be reduced, and the duration of work shifts should not increase. The Ministry of Labor announced its readiness to discuss the proposal for a "four-day". This was announced by the head of the department Anton Kotyakov . Soon after that, the trade unions started talking about the transition to the "four-day" almost as a fait accompli. Public opinion polls have already been conducted on this score. According to the SuperJob study, which was attended by 1,600 people across Russia, 30% of Russians support the proposal to move to a four-day work week. Almost half of the respondents - about 47% - believe that this decision should be made by the employer. 23% could not answer the question. For the most part, the opinion of the respondents was influenced by the lack of clarity with salaries in the event of the transition to a four-day period.

Mikhail Shmakov, the head of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia , also warned about this in his time. According to him, the main condition for the introduction of a four-day working week should be the preservation of employees' wages. Shmakov believes that most employers are not ready to cut the working week without cutting wages. “I have just returned from Udmurtia. There, at the largest enterprise, a four-day period was introduced. All workers are unhappy because such a work week eats up 20% of their wages, ”he said.

But the discussion of the transition to the "four-day" over time has reached a dead end: the pandemic has made significant changes in the work schedule of many campaigns. “The employers have every reason to revise the working conditions. But they will act primarily in the interests of business. The pandemic had a heavy impact on the state of industry and business: demand fell, many companies incurred additional costs, when switching to “remote”, some employers had to pay for online communications, purchase and install additional programs. Revenues fell predictably. The only way to keep the company under these conditions is to cut costs. The simplest of these is saving on employee salaries. In this regard, the issue of reducing working hours can be considered”, - said Irina Abankina, Candidate of Economic Sciences, Director of the Institute for the Development of Education at the Higher School of Economics.

The pandemic has not deprived everyone of income. Service-related companies, on the contrary, experienced a real boom. And they should really think about increasing the work week. All this should, logically, lead to an increase in employees' salaries. But a different trend has emerged on the Russian labor market. "The law on self-employed has contributed to the change in working conditions in Russia. Many organizations have begun to draw up contracts with employees as self-employed. In this case, they have no obligations for salaries, sick leave, vacations, social security. All insurance risks and tax liabilities for This is solely the responsibility of the employee, which is controversial from the point of view of labor legislation”, - says economist Irina Abankina .

It is interesting that the trade unions do not comment on all this chaos in the current Russian labor market. In the meantime, widespread violation of labor laws has become a practice rather than an exception. At the same time, workers cannot defend their rights: in conditions of job cuts, ruin and closure of enterprises and companies, people agree to any, sometimes onerous, conditions. “By putting employees on more or less workload, employers have ceased to be responsible for this. Increasingly, cases when sick leave are not compensated, vacation pay is not paid. From my point of view, the situation on the Russian labor market is now more than serious. People of retirement and pre-retirement age are especially affected in this situation. After all, Russia is a unique country in which a career is directly dependent on age. It is no secret that from a certain age, it is difficult for a person, regardless of his qualifications and success, to find a job. At the same time, the proportion of elderly people in the country is increasing every year. For fear of losing their jobs and income, people agree to any, the most onerous conditions of employers, and the trade unions have never intervened in this regard”, - said Irina Abankina, director of the Institute for the Development of Education at the Higher School of Economics.

While there are disputes in Russia about the length of the working week, European countries continue to consider the transition to a "four-day" with the preservation of wages. For example, Iceland called the experiment to introduce a four-day work week "a stunning success." As the Independent reports, it turned out that with the reduction in working hours, employee productivity in most cases remained the same or even increased. The standard 40 hours of working time per week was cut to 35-36 hours, while maintaining full wages. It was the largest such experiment in the world. It was attended by 2.5 thousand people of the country. This initiative came from the trade unions. According to the data of this study, the well-being of workers has also improved in a number of indicators: people have decreased stress levels, they began to “burn out” less at work, and were able to establish a balance between work and personal life. Another positive effect is that employees have learned to better plan their working hours.

"The key to these studies is that the amount of time spent on discussion, face-to-face communication, smoke and coffee breaks has decreased. That is, people work more efficiently, focus on work, knowing that then they will rest", - said the senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy at the Higher School of Economics, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, Leading Research Fellow at the Federal Research Sociological Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vasily Anikin. According to the economist, a lot of people work in Russia, but labor efficiency is much lower when compared with European countries.

While government officials are making plans to change the length of the working week, at enterprises, offices, workshops, laboratories and remote work, the working week is built according to its own laws. "In most cases, the employee and the employer agree on an individual schedule. When concluding an employment contract, you need to negotiate your terms and agree on a flexible schedule that will be convenient for both the employee and the employer while maintaining salaries. Many companies already do this. Does this fit into labor legislation? "Of course, not always. But under the current conditions, the majority have no other choice", - says economist Irina Abankina.

In general, it is not difficult to guess that in the matter of reducing or increasing the working week, Russia, as usual, will go its own way.