Russian Railways are considering the possibility of employing convicts and foreigners

Given the shortage of personnel, Russian Railways is considering the possibility of hiring foreign citizens and those sentenced to forced labor. In addition, due to a shortage of workers, Russian Railways plans to relax the hiring requirements for women, teenagers and pensioners. Deputy General Director of the company Dmitry Shakhanov announced this in his speech at the Transport of Russia forum.

According to Mr. Shakhanov, Russian Railways, like all manufacturing enterprises in the country, are experiencing a shortage of personnel, especially among blue-collar professions, and now the company faces the task of not only retaining employees, but also attracting new ones. To achieve this, various options are being considered to facilitate employment and improve working conditions for women, adolescents and other social groups who have difficulties finding employment in the transport sector.

“There is a proposal, there is an initiative on the part of our veterans and pensioners to return to work. To do this, you need to work out in detail the conditions, barriers including medicine, some kind of flexible schedules, a flexible regime, an individual employment contract or something else. We are working on this,” said Dmitry Shakhanov.

As Dmitry Shakhanov stated, Russian Railways have already contacted the Federal Penitentiary Service to discuss the possibility of hiring those sentenced to forced labor. The Deputy General Director emphasized that the company understands all the risks associated with such an initiative, but considers this employment option an opportunity to solve the personnel shortage.

“Secondly, these are foreign citizens. There are also a number of problems with attracting them, including those related to wages in ruble terms. We have identified the need specifically for such workers in the context of specific enterprises, and we are starting to deal with this much more actively than before,” said Mr. Shakhanov.

According to surveys by the Gaidar Institute, 42% of Russian companies experienced a shortage of personnel at the beginning of the third quarter of 2023. In particular, it was announced by 22% of food industry enterprises, 32% of chemical industry enterprises, and 42% of mechanical engineering enterprises. How consider in the Ministry of Labor, to solve the problem of shortage of workers, an expert center is needed that could assess the situation, determine channels for finding people, select development programs and support measures individually for each enterprise. According to the department’s forecasts, the Employment Service should become such a center after its modernization.

In 2024, JSC Russian Railways completes the main work on the second stage of the expansion of the Eastern range and launches traffic. Plans to improve infrastructure include the modernization and expansion of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian Railways. According to the deputy general director of Russian Railways, Andrei Makarov, despite the constant shortage of personnel, a record 27 thousand people were attracted to the construction, which is enough for the further implementation of the expansion of the Eastern direction.

Read more about this in the Kommersant publication. “The third one has gone.”

Arseny Pushkin