By Stephen Wilson
 |
| Ivan the Fool |
'Pension reform is for
the well-being of our citizens. Pension reform is
inevitable! Stop
pretending to be poor! Be responsible for yourself!
Don't be lazy and rely
on your own strength. Drink less, try to keep
fit, then we can talk
about not living to the age of retirement.'
Tatiana Bozhenko,
United Russia
Those were the words
on a poster by a United Russian candidate for
post of mayor in a
town in Russia named Surgul. The words were
uttered at the time
when the Russian government is attempting to
push through highly
unpopular pension reforms which would raise
the retirement age of
woman to 60 , and men to 65. The
problem is that in an
estimated 36 regions of Russia, men don't even
live to the age of 65.
It is automatically presumed that men on the
eve of retirement age
can easily find work. But as organisations such
as Superjob point out,
the vast majority of companies don't want to
employ people in their
fifties and sixties. Andrei Zakharov, president
of the company
Superjob, stated: "I can guarantee that 99.9 % of
people who reach
retirement age will never be able to find a new job
again, even if they
are highly-qualified specialists, needed in the
labor market ."
In many towns throughout Russia, the unemployment
rate stands between
15-20% and even higher. If young people are
struggling to obtain
work, then imagine the predicament older people
face!
This is not a question
of laziness. The primitive and childish notion
that Russians are lazy
and just prefer to sit around and drink is absurd.
The reality is that
there is just very little work available in many towns
where key industries
which once offered work have closed down.
Such situations
existed in many Scottish towns in the 1980's where there
was just a ratio of
one vacancy to 80 job seekers or more. in other words,
it was literary
impossible to get work of any kind. Classical economists
even describe this as
structural unemployment. Bozhenko fails to even
grasp elementary
school boy economics. The idea that people pretend
to be poor is absurd.
On the contrary, poor people tend to try and conceal
their poverty because
they often perceive it as a sign of shame. It is rather
a few rich people who
claim to be poor so that they can evade taxation.
Drinking is not so
much the cause of poverty, as the consequence. People
who have lost their
job and feel devastated often try to drink away their sorrows.
Attempts to place the
mistakes of the government and the banks on to the
shoulders of the poor
is not new. in the 1980's the British state claimed
unemployment was
caused by the laziness of the British worker. Yet the
British worker
performed the longest working hours in Europe!
In Russia, people
might actually be misled into believing that most Russians,
are by nature, lazy.
Russian Folklore and stories about a lazy hero Ivan the
Fool, who gets
everything for nothing might appear to vindicate this tale. But
the tale is simply the
genre of comedy. It can't be taken seriously any more than
a 17th century English
hero called Lazy Lawrence.
The overwhelming
evidence suggests that Russian workers are among the
hardest workers of the
top ten hard workers in the world. In terms of working
long hours they do a
lot. While the average Russian worker can perform
40-50 hours a week,
the American worker does an average of 38 hours a week
and those in the
Netherlands work 29 hours a week. That is workers in the
Netherlands are
working a four day week. Compare this situation with teachers
who often work a
6 or 7 day week . So are those Russian workers lazy? On
the contrary, many of
them are overworking and doing a 60 hour week which
blatantly violates the
labor Code of the Russian Federation which insists the
working week should
not exceed 40 hours a week. Russian workers are scared
to take sick leave
even when they come down with flu because they fear losing
their pay as well as
ruining their career prospects. So is it any wonder that
flu epidemics are
frequent in Moscow? A study of the Russian labor market
by Tatiana Vasilouk,
from Lomonosov Moscow State University, confirmed that
Russians in deed, work
very long hours and that official figures vastly under
estimate how long they
work.
Of course it is
important to point out that what constitutes hard work can't
be simply measured by
how many hours a person does. One hour of very
intricate and complex
work on a computer is not the same as doing one
hour as a shop
assistant. It is worth asking: is a long hour culture in the office
such a good thing?
Does working longer hours increase performance? A lot
of research tends to
undermine this notion. You see the law of diminishing
returns operating.
This is especially true when it comes to teaching. The more
hours a teacher
performs the more likely the quality of his lessons decreases.
It is also important
to observe that many totalitarian regimes made a supreme
virtue of hard work
such as the Nazis who proclaimed 'Work makes you free'
and in the Soviet
Union where they made you a 'hero of labor' for outstanding
work. Yet all this
overwork leads to needless stress, suffering and often
premature death. In
one story of Lazy Lawrence he is arrested for playing
pranks! He ends
up in court, but he is acquitted by the jury because some
apprentices turn up on
his behalf and argue: "If it were not for Lazy Lawrence
we would be worked to
death". The world needs to hear more about Lazy
Lawrence. And the
Russian workers should be acquitted of base accusations
of laziness!
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