Wage arrears in Sverdlovsk Region come to 20m RUR in 2006

Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities carried out inspections of a number of local enterprises in order to check their compliance with the existing Labor Code. As a result, three companies fully paid off their workers’ wages between August 21, 2009 and September 1, 2009, the spokesperson for the authorities says. The sum in question amounted to 5.15 million RUR. For one, Uraltyazhstrubstroy eliminated its 3.978 million RUR worth of wage arrears (the workers’ wages for May and June 2009); Tavdinskiy plywood factory and Norvud paid off their 970,000 RUR and 209,000 RUR worth of

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin made a few wage arrears-preventing proposals at the recent administration meeting dedicated to labor law compliance. Sumin believes some changes have to be made in the existing legislation; for one, there has to appear an amendment that would enable the regional officials to ask the tax authorities for data on taxpayers’ debts. ‘Our executive branch is actually deprived of essential information on the local enterprises’ financial state,’ he said. The Governor also announced it was necessary to track down the reasons for the accumulation of wage

‘The wage arrears in Sverdlovsk Region came to 30 million RUR on January 1, 2007; however, the figure reached the point of 152 million on December 1, 2006. The debt was reduced due the joint efforts of the public prosecution authorities, local government, and Sverdlovsk Region Labour inspectorate,’ Deputy State Inspector for Legal Issues of Sverdlovsk Region division of Labour inspectorate Maxim Vedernikov announced at the press conference. Last year’s inspections revealed that 533 regional enterprises failed to pay the salaries on time to 23,336 employees. As a result, 858 orders to

Head of the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Administration Alexander Levin and First Deputy Head of Government for Economic Policies and Prospective Development, Minister of Economics and Labor Mikhail Maksimov took part in the recession-fighting team meeting under the Plenipotentiary Representation of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District. The meeting was chaired by Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative Vladimir Krupkin. Mikhail Maksimov reported the unemployment rate remained virtually the same last week, with about 87,300 jobless registered in the region by August 26, 2009.

Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation still hasn’t been able to cope with the arrears of wages in full. The enterprise’s employees say they only got their wages for December 2008, whereas their January pay is still pending. In addition, the company gave up on its welding engineering sector for the time being, while a number of production shops have been switched to shorter hours. In the meantime, the recent checks completed by the public prosecution authorities revealed that Yekaterinburg-based Uralmashzavod had over 60 million RUR worth of wage arrears, the spokesperson for the Russian