The deputies argued about the possible and desirable

The State Duma on Wednesday adopted in the third, final reading a law on increasing the minimum wage (minimum wage) by 963 rubles from 2023. The opposition factions supported the government’s initiative, although the amount set at 16.2 thousand rubles, in their opinion, ensures only “survival”. Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin urged the deputies not to be ashamed of the decision, because in the current “difficult time” this is all they can do.

The law adopted on Wednesday establishes the minimum wage from January 1, 2023 in the amount of 16,242 rubles. per month (from June 1, 2022, the minimum wage is set at 15,279 rubles). The document also suspends from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024 inclusive, the provisions of the law on the minimum wage, which provide for the calculation of the minimum wage based on the median wage. According to an explanatory note to the bill, introduced by the government at the end of September, the adoption of the law will help secure wage increases for about 3.5 million workers.

The adoption of bills in the third reading often takes place in the Duma without discussion, but this time representatives of all factions wanted to speak out, except for the New People.

All opposition deputies supported the increase in the minimum wage, since “it is better to add than not to add”, but they did not agree with the final amount.

The head of the committee on labor and social policy, Yaroslav Nilov (LDPR), expressed regret that the Duma majority, represented by United Russia, did not support the amendment of the liberal democrats to set the minimum wage at the level of 20 thousand rubles, although this amount is “a subsistence minuscule ”, which allows today to provide people with only “biological survival”. At the same time, he supported the government’s proposal to temporarily abandon the median methodology for determining the minimum wage: “This is primarily due to the fact that very high inflation was recorded this year.”

The deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Alexei Kurinny admitted that it would be wrong to vote against, but stressed that the methodology for calculating the minimum wage “has nothing to do with the real costs of citizens.” He recalled that two years ago the Duma commissioned a study that “calculated the subsistence minimum based on the real needs of citizens – this figure was 30,000-odd rubles.”

Today’s minimum wage, according to the communist, is aimed at “survival and a beggarly existence.”

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation also has a bill to increase the minimum wage, but it “is not considered by the Duma,” the deputy complained.

Andrey Kuznetsov (“A Just Russia – For Truth”) urged his colleagues in the chamber, despite the support of the project, not to pretend that “everything is wonderful here,” and noted that “the state is approaching the title of a slave owner, if we look at the consumer basket.”

After that, the speaker Vyacheslav Volodin (United Russia) took the floor, who asked the deputies “not to speculate on such decisions.” According to him, any decision made “should be analyzed from the point of view of the time in which we live,” and now it is “difficult.” Recalling the times when in our country “there was no consumption: there was a jersey and there was a queue to the meat store”, Mr. Volodin assured that now the Russian leadership is not shifting its problems onto the shoulders of the population, but “is doing everything to balance the budget, find funds for it. “Yes, we are talking about the fact that this amount is not what we should strive for. We understand this, but there is no need to trample on this decision with our feet and say that we will vote for it, but in fact this is all wrong, ”the chairman of the chamber instructed his colleagues.

“We honestly say: in this situation, this solution is the only possible one. Therefore, we should not be ashamed of him,” the speaker summed up.

As a result, the adoption of the document in the third reading was supported by 396 deputies, who did not vote against.

Maria Makutina