Russians have come up with a new article in the housing and communal services payment system

It was proposed to take into account the salaries of janitors and plumbers in the tariff

The housing and communal services sector is hit by a staff shortage. There are not enough janitors, they work poorly, and their qualifications are deplorable. The reason for this is the low salaries of industry specialists. The authorities figured out how to rectify the situation and proposed that the salaries of housing and communal services workers be included in the tariff for the population. Perhaps this initiative will lead to an increase in the average salaries of janitors, electricians and plumbers employed in the housing and communal services sector. And it is likely that increased earnings will be an incentive to attract employees to the industry. However, this measure will not completely solve the problem of personnel shortage.

The State Duma proposed to take into account the salaries of housing and communal services workers in the tariff. When setting housing and communal services tariffs (heating, water supply, sewerage, gas, electricity, garbage removal), it is planned to take into account the “minimum wage, the minimum wage in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation and the average wage in the region.” The reason for the emergence of the initiative is related to the shortage of personnel in the housing and communal services sector. The Ministry of Construction has been instructed to prepare proposals for changes to regulatory legal acts.

Meanwhile, about 3 million people work in the housing and communal services sector in Russia. There is even an annual professional holiday – “Service Workers Day”. But despite the importance of public utility employees, their income leaves much to be desired. So the average salary in housing and communal services in Moscow is 60 thousand rubles, in the regions it is much less.

This sector of the economy has two problems, says Pavel Sklyanchuk, an expert in the field of housing and communal services, an analyst of the ONF thematic platform “Housing and the Urban Environment”. Firstly, this is aging: the average age of blue-collar workers is close to retirement age. Secondly, there is turnover, precisely because wages are low. People don’t stay here long.

“This situation is typical for management organizations, water utilities, and heat supply organizations. The situation is better in the electric power industry, since there is more skilled labor with an engineering bias. In general, in the housing and communal services sector there is a shortage of workers: foremen of emergency dispatch teams, plumbers, and janitors. There is a real shortage of personnel here,” notes MK’s interlocutor.

Today, the salaries of employees of enterprises in the housing and communal services sector are formed taking into account a tripartite industry agreement, which is signed at the RSPP site by trade unions and associations of employers in the housing and communal services sector. The document says that wages should make up a significant percentage of the structure of current costs. But, by and large, there are few sources for increasing wages, Sklyanchuk continues.

“Until recently, the topic of increasing the salaries of public sector employees from the life support sector at the expense of tariffs due to chronic underfunding in the housing and communal services sector was not raised. The problem has reached the level of the specialized commission of the State Council. Now we will be working on how to increase the level of wage growth for workers as part of the indexation of housing and communal services tariffs,” the expert concluded.

Meanwhile, according to statistics, the average salary in the housing and communal services sector is lower by 30 percent, and somewhere by 40%, than the average salary in the regions. These are the lowest paid positions in the economy. They are not considered attractive among graduates of specialized colleges and technical schools. Mostly, older people go to work in specialized companies.

“According to trade union organizations, today there are no more than 18% of young people in housing and communal services, and turnover exceeds 30%,” says Artem Deev, head of the analytical department at AMarkets. “In many ways, it is precisely because of this that the state of the housing and communal services infrastructure is constantly getting worse.”

Raising salaries is one of the measures to attract employees that first comes to mind. And she could really help, Deev believes.

“And yet I think it’s wrong to shift this responsibility onto the shoulders of the Russians. Moreover, the residents of the houses already receive not very high-quality services. I think we need to find money to increase salaries in the housing and communal services sector in another way: for example, by optimizing operating expenses,” the analyst concluded.

According to Ivan Samoilenko, managing partner of B&C Agency, this initiative will not completely solve the problem of staff shortages. “Comprehensive measures are needed to resolve this issue; increasing wages is only one of them,” the expert is convinced.