The woman who complained to Putin about low salaries in the space industry told about herself

Lyubov Shiryaeva compared the wages of her colleagues with courier wages

The Russian President was surprised at a recent meeting with young space industry employees in Korolev by their low salaries. The unexpected truth was revealed to him by industrial engineer from Russian Space Systems (RSS) Lyubov Shiryaeva.

When the topic of retention in the industry came up, she said that, unfortunately, it was becoming a challenge. “For example, a quarter of my young employees have left my team this year: some for commerce, some for private companies where salaries are higher. What should we do if young engineers who have mastered complex professions at a university receive less than couriers in the market!”

If this continues, then, according to Lyubov, there will be a personnel shortage in the industry, and astronautics will not be able to develop. “Can we count on any changes in terms of remuneration for our labor?” – she asked Putin.

The president said that he was surprised by the size of the employees’ salaries when he looked through the materials provided to him before the meeting: “To be honest, I didn’t expect it. …You know, in scientific institutions employees should receive 200 percent of the average salary in the region. This (space industry – MK) is the most important area, I don’t even know how we missed it.”

Further, answering a specific question from a young RKS employee about increasing wages, the president added the following: “In such matters, everything cannot be resolved in one click, but we will definitely move forward, we will definitely do this.”

We called Lyubov and asked what personally keeps her at the enterprise.

“I came into the industry back in 2006 as an instrument technologist,” says the girl. – We created, for example, command-measuring systems for the scientific spacecraft “Spektr-R” and “Spektr-RG”, which have been taking unique pictures of our Universe for several years now and have collected a lot of unique data. This is very pleasing and inspiring. For me, space is a dream of humanity, a great challenge. In addition, the company has many areas where you can prove yourself. If you didn’t like working as a technologist, you could retrain as a designer or circuit designer. The same programmers will always find work with us. Agree, controlling real satellites is much more interesting than writing programs for games. But it is not only ambitious tasks that are the reason for attraction to the profession. These are also people who work in the industry. There are probably no such unique groups anywhere: very versatile, educated people with sparkling eyes and a desire to bring something valuable and useful into this world.

– So for you, the interest in work outweighs the money factor?

– When I went into the space industry, I basically understood that the salaries here were not high, and therefore I specifically received a second higher education so that, if necessary, I could earn extra money.

– What did you finish?

– I graduated from the Tsiolkovsky Moscow Aviation Technology Institute (it is now part of the MAI). My second education is as an economist. It was not useful to me as a specialty, but it makes it easier to resolve organizational work issues. For example, I know exactly what kind of vacation pay I should receive and how sick leave will be paid if I need to take it.