Vladimir tells me that his colleagues are just as unhappy as those who stayed at home during the pandemic. Most employers offering work in Russia’s north, including his employer, set their pay system at a basic minimum level wage (12,130 roubles a month) plus various extras: bonuses, cold weather allowances and supplements for harmful work conditions. An average net monthly income for a driller’s assistant is 60,000-80,000 roubles. According to coronavirus regulations, their employer must pay employees who are not actually working a minimum of two-thirds of their basic wage (although not their actual salary). Colleagues of Vladimir who were temporarily out of work were being paid around 11,000-13,000 roubles a month.
“Guys have families, mortgages, loans – and they’re sitting at home and earning kopecks. And there’s not a lot of part-time work around either,” he says. “If you want to leave, you’re very welcome. ‘We’re not holding anyone back,’ they say at work. Oil production has dropped this year as well, so there’s less work, and nowhere in particular to look for it.”
Yevgeniya, a café manager: “Fewer customers, more oxygen”
In mid-March, a full self-isolation regime was introduced in Saratov, and then president Putin announced that the whole of April was a non-working month. Cafes, beauty salons, fitness clubs and cinemas all closed down. The restrictions were then gradually lifted over the summer, and now the region is stuck in Stage 2 (out of three) of restrictions being lifted. Business owners, who have to pay their staff non-working days as well as the rental on their premises, are continuing to make losses.
Yevgeniya, who manages a kebab café in the town of Balakovo, has seen few downsides of the restrictions. She quickly sorted out her deliveries during the quarantine period, and during the spring months, the demand for kebabs, salads and cold snacks was consistently high. She was able to process up to 30 orders a day, working two shifts from 10am to midnight.
“People still had money to buy kebabs, and it didn’t seem to bother them that they couldn’t go out into the countryside in groups or that many families had lost income. There was an impression that the quarantine didn’t affect our city,” says Yevgeniya, adding that it was easier to run a delivery service. “There would be no one inside the café to irritate people, and the fewer customers, the more oxygen.”
The café’s team is small, only six people. The owner hasn’t had to sack anyone or send anyone on holiday. The only downside was that they had to postpone the opening of a second establishment. This had been planned to open back in April, but delays with the installation of equipment meant they had to wait until mid-summer.
By July, summer cafes were opening throughout the area. Café owners had to adjust to customers’ demands – some put out tables and sofas along narrow pavements and parking areas.
Despite all this, says Yevgeniya, not all her old acquaintances in the catering sector returned to work. “My friend worked in a hotel restaurant. They closed the hotel, and for some reason they didn’t want to go into the catering delivery business. If we had been allowed to open a summer café… but they are still sitting at home. The owner probably decided to insure himself – the establishment belongs to a large industrial firm, and they worked in the official sector, paying all their taxes and so on,” she tells me.
Whereas during the months of lockdown, her friend earns just around 12,000 roubles a month – a minimal sum. According to the Saratov regional restaurateurs’ guild, 20-30% of catering establishments were lost to the pandemic. Business owners, deprived of their profits, couldn’t pay their staff, and they also had to pay their landlords for empty spaces, while cheap loans they had taken out couldn’t be of use to set up a business in restriction conditions.
Aliya, unemployed single parent: “It’s a good thing that we have elections this year”
Last summer, Aliya, a 29-year-old single mother, left the children’s nursery where she worked as a nanny, and took a job in a cheap clothing shop. The hours were convenient, it was close to her home and the salary was 25,000 roubles a month. The fact that the owner suggested paying her in cash didn’t bother her at the time: “If you don’t work in the state sector or a large company, your salary is unlikely to be official – you’ll either get it semi-officially or under the table. Few of the local organisations can allow themselves to pay every tax and fee.”
When the shop closed during quarantine, Aliya was let go “until better times”. “There was total confusion. Where could I go if everywhere was shut and there was no work anywhere?” she remembers.
Aliya’s monthly mortgage repayment is 9,000 roubles, and another 2,000 goes on utilities. Presidential child benefits helped to pay her mortgage repayments and somehow survive: her six-year-old daughter was given a one-off payment of 10,000 roubles and around 5,000 roubles each month. They even rescued Aliya’s aged parents, who live in their own home on a minimal pension.
In the middle of April, the government gave the young woman some pleasant news: from 1 March anyone who had lost their job during the coronavirus was entitled to a higher monthly benefit rate – 12,130 roubles. Aliya got her papers together and submitted a statement online. A week later, someone from the State Employment Centre phoned to confirm that she was officially unemployed and therefore entitled to a monthly benefit of 1,500 roubles.
“I started to stutter from shock when I heard: sorry, how much?” Aliya tells me. The woman explained that the maximum benefit was available only to working people who had lost their work after 1 March. For all others who had lost official employment earlier, they calculate the number of weeks over the last 365 days before they become unemployed. If they have over 26 weeks, they receive 75% of their previous salary (up to 12,000 roubles a month). Aliya, however, had only 24 official previous weeks, including her time at the children’s nursery, hence why she was awarded minimum benefit.
In June, the labour exchange gave Aliya yet another gift: the minimum three-month employment benefit was rising from 1,500 to 4,500 roubles, plus 3,000 roubles for each child. “We’re in luck that there is an election this year,” says the unemployed single mother as she links her benefits with the July 2020 vote on constitutional amendments.
During the coronavirus pandemic, around 60,000 people applied to the regional labour exchange – only around 10,000 unemployed people were registered before it, and in all this time Aliya wasn’t offered a single job. In October, when monthly unemployment benefit falls to 1,500 roubles again, Aliya plans to find herself a job independently, looking first at sales opportunities, where she has had some experience. “I’ll try to get an official job first, or at least a ‘grey’ one,” she tells me.
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Gulmira Amangaliyeva | Radio Free (2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00) Covid-time jobs: how Russia’s working people are dealing with the pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/10/15/covid-time-jobs-how-russias-working-people-are-dealing-with-the-pandemic/
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