Representatives of employers, trade unions and government will conclude a new general tripartite agreement

Representatives of employers, trade unions and the government have begun negotiations to conclude a new general tripartite agreement for the next three years. Despite the fact that this document is primarily declarative in nature, the parties to the social partnership have discovered many disagreements regarding its future content. In particular, the trade unions would like to see in the agreement promises of annual indexation of wages to the forecast level of inflation, as well as the establishment of a norm that the difference in wages between the 10% of the most and least paid groups of workers at the enterprise should be no more than tenfold.

The new version of the general agreement will be valid in 2024–2026, the current one was signed by the parties in 2019. The document is de facto a declaration of coordinated actions to regulate social and labor relations and is signed by associations of trade unions, employers and the government. The first consultations on the contents of the new document took place at the end of last week at the Russian Tripartite Commission. The agreement is part of a collective agreement in the social partnership system and serves as the basis for concluding industry agreements at the federal level, as well as regional agreements. The document consists of several sections, each of which represents the consolidated position of the parties on issues of economic policy, labor market regulation, payroll and industrial safety.

The purpose of the document is to coordinate the actions of the parties to the social partnership, to “outline a vector,” explains Anna Ivanova, head of the labor law practice at BGP Litigation. “Typically, the agreement does not establish specific guarantees for workers and does not impose additional obligations on employers. At the same time, the Labor Code provides for the possibility of employers refusing only industry agreements or regional agreements on the minimum wage,” the expert notes.

Despite the declarative nature of the agreement, its preparation is regularly accompanied by disputes between the parties. “We have now drawn up the first version of the document, and, of course, employers do not really want to see a number of proposals that trade unions would like to implement and that would improve the situation of workers. However, we still have time until the end of December to resolve differences and create the final version of the document,” FNPR secretary Oleg Sokolov explained to Kommersant.

As follows from the table of these disagreements (available to Kommersant), the parties are ready to argue on each of the planned thematic sections. For example, in terms of economic policy, trade unions propose the introduction of progressive income taxation, as well as the establishment of a luxury tax, which is not supported by either employers or the government. In the section on approaches to calculating employee salaries, trade unions propose obliging employers to index them at least once a year to the level of forecast inflation. Employers and the government also do not support this. “How can this item be seriously discussed at the current level of price growth?” — Kommersant’s interlocutor in one large industrial company is surprised.

In turn, employers propose adding to Section 6 of the future agreement (development of social partnership) a clause on the need to reduce the administrative burden on employers by optimizing control and supervisory activities. It has also been proposed to transfer some labor reporting to electronic form, but trade unions do not agree with this. Among the government’s proposals, which found support from only one side of the agreement, is a reduction in the wage differentiation between the 10% of the most paid and the 10% of the least paid groups of workers. This approach is supported by employers, but not by trade unions, who propose to go further and set a specific target for such differentiation – no more than ten times. In addition, the government is ready to facilitate the participation of employee representatives in management meetings in companies (with advisory voting rights). Employers are expected to oppose such an innovation.

Anastasia Manuilova