Russian teachers strike for wage pay-out
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — When more than 3 million Russian school pupils ended their annual winter holidays in mid-January, some students did not return to class at all, as teachers who had gone unpaid for months vowed to keep their schools shut until salaries were paid up in full.
For many more pupils, the first week back was a turbulent period as their teachers cancelled lessons and joined in protest meetings.
Leaders of the Trade Union of Science and Education Workers reported that 437,000 teachers, about a tenth of the total, took part in strike action. Educational establishments were affected in 66 of Russia's 89 administrative regions. In numerous cities, education and science workers demonstrated outside government offices.
Schoolteachers, who are overwhelmingly women, receive abysmal pay. The average teacher's wage is about 540,000 roubles a month — less than US$100 — compared with a national average of 850,000 roubles. The government in August 1995 legislated wage increases but failed to make any provision for the extra payments in the 1996 budget.
Protests by teachers during 1996 extracted from the government a pledge that all money owed to teachers from the federal budget would be paid by January 1. The promise was not kept. According to the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on January 11, the wage debt owed to teachers had risen to a total of more than 6 trillion roubles.
The wages of most Russian educators are not paid directly from the federal budget, but pass through the accounts of regional authorities. Whether the wages are then paid out depends on the needs and priorities of the local administrations.
Recognising that education workers had been driven to the point where they posed a political danger, the federal authorities met the strikes with concessions. On January 16 first deputy finance minister Andrei Petrov pledged that the sums owing to teachers from the 1996 federal budget would be paid by the end of the month.
But state spokespeople have continued to stress that most of the wage debt is owed by regional authorities; it is to these officials, the logic runs, that teachers should from now on address their claims.
Outside the House of Government in Moscow, a picket of some 500 education and science workers on January 13 seemed unconvinced that the federal government lacked the power to make regional authorities meet their wage bills.
"We eat nothing but potatoes", Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported picketing teachers as complaining. "Or we run up debts in the shops, where they give us bread and grains."
"In the school there's no money to buy light bulbs or even chalk. There's one textbook for every three students, and pupils faint from hunger."
"Every time there's a public protest they give us our pay", instructors from the Moscow Aviation Institute told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. "We just hope it's the same this time."