First federal agreement signed for coal industry in Russia

The agreement, which covers more than 80 percent of workers in the coal industry of Russia, starts from 1 April 2013 and is valid for three years till 2016. Rosugleprof believes one of the strongest achievements of the agreement is the guarantee of quarterly wage increases indexing inflation based on the data of the Federal Statistics Agency. This agreement will allow for a maintaining and increasing of wages and living standards for miners in Russia.

Some points of the new agreement will apply only to the union members or the employees who authorize the union to represent them.

Among many others the agreement provides for a number of benefits including the following:

• Employee with a minimum of ten year length of service upon retirement will receive a one-time bonus of 15 per cent of their monthly salary for each year of service;
• The employer provides transport for employees to and from the workplace;
• Every two years the employer compensates transfer expenses for employees to the place of holiday and back within Russia (applies to residents of the northern regions);
• The employer creates conditions for professional training and skills development for young employees and provides benefits for their future education;
• The employer provides scholarship to children of employees who died in an enterprise accident, as well as compensation to the injured workers.

In addition to the achieved agreement the parties decided to meet twice a year for evaluation of the ongoing agreement as well as in April 2014 to start negotiations of a new Federal Industry Agreement.