SOCIETY

It could be time to work til you drop, with a proposed change to labour laws allowing staff to put in 60 hours a week.

That’s a 50 per cent hike on the current legal maximum of 40 hours, and industrialists and entrepreneurs claim it’s time the balance between staff and companies was shifted back in favour of the bosses.

As well as longer hours, they want the right to release staff on one month’s notice – down from the current two-month term to be served in the absence of any proven misconduct.

But the idea has been slammed as a retreat to the sweatshops of a bygone era.

Back to the 19^th century

“This comes from a completely anti-worker perspective, it is a totally immoral attempt to economise at the expense of workers,” Pyotr Bizyukov at the Centre for Social and Labour Studies told The Moscow News. “These are tactics from the first half of the 19^th century,” he stormed.

“When I heard about the idea of introducing a 60 hour work week, I couldn’t believe it, and I actually don’t now.  Life in this city has never been easy. So, with 60 working hours a week the life of a Muscovite would literally turn into hell, bearing in mind that it takes too much time and patience to travel around the city,” disgruntled IT worker Sasha told The Moscow News

The employers’ view

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs’ draft amendments to Russia’s traditionally employee-weighted labour code would bring about some drastic changes and what some say is badly needed modernisation, including raising the current 40-hour working week to 60 hours, Kommersant reported.

Employers would be able to change or terminate contracts unilaterally at one month’s notice and students would be hit as they would no longer be able to take paid leave for exams, unless their employers have sent them on their courses.

It’s been argued that these changes are vital to stimulate an economy still struggling to come to terms with the impact of the recent recession. 

Two way process

Despite the anger shown by many workers, not everyone feels this is a return to the dark days of an exploited proletariat slaving away to fatten the wallets of the few.

And some feel changing the law would merely allow formal legal recognition for many workers who are piling up the hours in a bid to pay their bills – without necessarily forcing staff into extra, unwanted shifts. 

“The trade unions would be emphatically against this but in Russia, at least in this city, there are many people who work extra hours and so there is already a notion of people working 2 jobs or one and a half jobs. This recognises that reality and allows both employers and employees to formalise that relationship,” New Eurasia Foundation president Andrei Kortunov told The Moscow News.

Changes will have to be agreed by both workers’ representatives and employers, says RSPP vice president Fyodor Prokopov. Lawyers are generally in favour of changes to the now obsolete Soviet Labor code, citing paid study leave as an example.

As it currently stands, the labour code provides “very strong protection for workers while employers often cannot demand even basic fulfillment of duties from a lazy employee,” Goltsbalt BLP partner Anna-Stefaniya Chepnik told Kommersant.

But lawyers have also identified problems with the proposals, with Tatyana Bicheva of Lidings Law Firm saying that terminating a contract on a month’s notice is “unacceptable”.