A meeting of the Expert Council of the Federation of Trade Unions was held today. The meeting was opened by a member of the Council, Deputy Chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nurlan Uteshev.
During the meeting, the initiatives of the FTURK to improve labor legislation in the field of increasing incomes of the population were discussed.
Chairman of the Expert Council of the FTURK, deputy of the Majilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan Ekaterina Smyshlyaeva reported on the work carried out on two blocks of legislative amendments.
“The first set of amendments is aimed at improving labor legislation, including increasing the income of the population at the expense of labor income,” Ekaterina Smyshlyaeva said.
According to the deputy, another block of changes will be discussed in the near future – the issue of social partnership.
Director of the Research Institute of Human Rights of the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Candidate of Legal Sciences Anuar Tugel noted the need to improve some provisions of the Labor Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
“The existing legislative shortcomings are the cause of many labor disputes,” he said. It is known that social partnership and collective bargaining cannot compensate for these shortcomings. It was expected that the new Labor Code would supplement these points. There are a lot of questions. Now we need to deal with this systematically and conceptually,” the expert said.
Ekaterina Smyshlyaeva said that the Labor Code has been constantly updated since its adoption. The MP expressed hope that the proposals under discussion will help to eliminate these shortcomings.
She also raised the issue of reducing the wage gap.
“Since 2018, our wage system has been steadily increasing in the budgetary and industrial spheres. The private sector would receive 1.5-2 times more than the public sector. In the case of a lawyer, his salary in the private sector can be 3.4 times higher. And we didn’t see much difference between industries and in the industry subsystem. Recently, we have begun to systematically raise the status of some professions. With the adoption of the Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan “On the status of a teacher”, the salaries of qualified specialists in the field of education have increased, and the difference in wages within one team has caused labor disputes,” Ekaterina Smyshlyaeva said.
According to her, with a double increase in the teacher’s salary, the salary of the other employees remained unchanged.
Since the beginning of last year, the difference in salaries in one team has reached about 7-8 times. According to the deputy, this is a lot.
“Medical workers and civil servants found themselves in such a situation,” Ekaterina Smyshlyaeva said.
According to the expert, when it comes to wages, the question arises which industry these or other professions belong to.
The deputy said that the main idea of the legislative changes under discussion is to regulate, stabilize and systematize the steps of the state in relation to the remuneration system.
Director of the Kazakh Research Institute of Labor, Doctor of Economics, Professor Serikzhan Bereshev expressed his opinion on the definition of the industry coefficient by the Government.
“I believe that such issues should be comprehensively addressed in the Labor Code. In the previous code, there was a minimum standard of remuneration. I think it should be restored. Coefficients are set in almost all industries,” Serikzhan Bereshev said.
Associate Professor of the Department of Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law of KazGUU Ainur Nadirova noted that paragraph 1 of Article 3 of the Labor Code should be supplemented with the concept of “establishing a minimum state guarantee”.
Recall that the new composition of the FTURK Expert Council was approved at the end of December 2021. It includes members of Parliament, prominent scientists and government and public figures in the field of social and labor relations and protection of labor rights of citizens. The members of the Expert Council develop coordinated approaches to further improve legislation affecting the interests of employees and openly discuss current social and labor issues.