The Lakhta Center skyscraper construction site in November 2018. Photo by the Russian Reader
Aggressive Migrants Without Money Advance on Lakhta Center
Lidia Lvova Moyka78
February 1, 2020
The workers who have been building Lakhta Center, apparently, have no plans to retreat after hearing promises that they would be paid for their work—but not now, later, possibly within six to eight months.
Moyka78 has a video showing offended workers storming an office building on the premises of the skyscraper complex construction site.
It seems that hundreds of people are not willing to wait for months for their hard-earned pay.
Amid the shouting, a mediator can be heard trying to negotiate with the strikers. The builders of Lakhta Center respond only with indignation to his promises.
The workers make obscene gestures and react aggressively to the promises.
It is possible that to improve their performance the workers were fed such performance-enhancement drugs as meldonium.
Videos Showing Unrest Among Workers at Lakhta Center Have Appeared on the Internet: According to Our Information, They Were Pacified a Week Ago Fontanka.ru
February 2, 2020
Videos showing unrest among workers of the Turkish company Renaissance Construction, which is doing construction work at the Lakhta Center complex, have appeared on the internet. Fontanka has learned that the events recorded in the videos took place on the premises of Lakhta Center last Monday, January 27.
Police had to go to the site on the morning of January 27. The incident ended with one accidentally broken office window, the police issuing a ticket for swearing in a public place, and an awareness-raising discussion among the parties to the conflict.
Around two hundred employees of Renaissance Construction, the general construction contractor at the facility, demanded payment of their 2019 end-of-year bonus from management.
“Owing to the unrest among workers at the Lakhta Center construction site on January 27, 2020, Renaissance Construction JSC has conducted negotiations with the workforce to ascertain all the circumstances that gave rise to their complaints and looked into all their claims,” a spokesperson for Renaissance Construction told Fontanka.
As the spokesperson noted, the company explained to workers that they had been paid in full on January 15, and no back pay was owed to them.
“Currently, work has resumed at the site, and a constructive dialogue with the workers and outreach work are underway,” the spokesperson told Fontanka.
Thanks to Sergey Abashin for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader
You always want to avoid drinking with somebody during the holiday season. Maybe it’s that politically incorrect uncle of yours. Or maybe it’s a nagging in-law.
The well-known host of a health show on Russian state-run First Channel has another suggestion: shun those whom she calls “people of the Mongoloid race.” But it’s for their own protection, of course.
The segment, titled “whom not to drink with on New Year’s” begins with Yelena Malysheva, host of the program “Live Healthfully,” inviting an audience member up on stage.
A man named Shukrat, who identifies himself as an Uzbekistan native, is met with hearty laughter when he explains that he “wouldn’t want to drink with the police or the Federal Migration Service.”
Then Malysheva gets into the meat of her presentation, noting that Russians are “a white race, a Slavic one ” and “now we will talk about what race not to drink with on New Year’s.”
And just so there are no misunderstandings, she adds, “There is no discrimination here, just an understanding of the physiology that makes every race different.”
Shukrat then cuts in, noting that he “grew up in the Soviet Union, so I’m not a nationalist” and “can drink with black people and all people, to be honest.”
Malysheva reiterates that “when we talk about who not to drink with this New Year’s, we do not mean to cast scorn on anyone. We’re talking about the threat to their own health.”
She then turns to Dmitry Shubin, a “doctor” on her team and asks him to explain who not to drink with.
“In the interests of safety, one shouldn’t drink — no, not shouldn’t but mustn’t — drink with people who come from the Mongoloid race,” Shubin says, using a term to describe Asians that can be seen as derogatory. This group, he explains, includes Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and others in the Russian Far North.
Perhaps worried there may be confusion, Malysheva, using her fingers to press her own eyes together, explains that these “Mongoloids” can be identified by their narrow eyes and round facial features.
Just in case it still isn’t clear, she exhibits a slideshow of Asian-looking faces to avoid when in the presence of alcohol.
Shubin then explains the reasoning: Asians have a “genetic defect” that prevents them from properly metabolizing alcohol.
To demonstrate, he gives Shukrat and Malysheva liver-shaped containers, which are each apparently filled with black liquid (they don’t actually show what’s in Maysheva’s container before the experiment). As they both pour alcohol into their respective livers, Shukrat’s remains black. Malysheva’s becomes clear.
“Mongoloid: people with narrow eyes and crescent-shaped faces — [for them] alcohol is toxic,” Malysheva says, pointing to the fake liver a perplexed-looking Shukrat is holding. “And so the first people you should never drink with on New Year’s are representatives of the Mongoloid race. It is bad for them”
Research has shown that some people of East Asian descent — about one-third according to one expert — have a gene that causes difficulty in breaking down alcohol that could lead to long-term health consequences.
But doctors don’t generally recommend that non-Asians take the matter into their own hands by excluding people of Asian ethnicity from social drinking.
In Russia itself, according to a recent study in The Lancet medical journal, a quarter of Russian men die before the age of 55 — a rate far higher than the rest of Europe. And one of the chief causes is excessive alcohol consumption.
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“WHETHER OR NOT YOU WANT TO, YOU HAVE TO GO”
December 12, 2014 adcmemorial.org
From Tajikistan to Russia: Vulnerability and abuse of migrant workers and their families
Paris, St Petersburg, 10 December– The situation of Tajik migrants in Russia is deteriorating, said FIDH and ADC Memorial in a report released today. Increasingly restrictive migration laws are pushing migrants into irregular situations and increasing their vulnerability, while exploitation goes unchecked.
The dire economic situation in Tajikistan, where around 40% of the population of working age is unemployed, continues to push hundreds of thousands of men and women to leave for Russia every year. According to official statistics, in 2014 there were over a million Tajik citizens in Russia. The remittances sent back represent 47% of Tajikistan’s GDP, the highest percentage of any country worldwide. For most families, they are the main source of income. This trend looks set to continue.
Despite recent measures announced by the Tajik authorities, migrants remain highly vulnerable to abuse. As a result of increased restrictions on entry and stay in Russia, deportations have multiplied and tens of thousands of migrants have been subjected to re-entry bans. Migrant workers interviewed by FIDH and ADC Memorial reported extortion by Russian police and border guards, arbitrary arrests and police violence. Fuelled by xenophobic political discourse and media reports, vigilante attacks on migrants are on the rise. Those responsible for attacks benefit from almost complete impunity. The report also documents non-payment of wages, poor living conditions, and lack of access to medical treatment.
“The multiplication of legal restrictions, raids on migrants like Operation Migrant 2014, launched this November, and rising xenophobia are resulting in serious violations of migrants’ human rights. We are deeply concerned about recent acts of violence against migrants, on the part of the police and civilians, which have gone unpunished”, said Karim Lahidji, FIDH President. “In December, it became clear that Operation Migrant 2014 would be ongoing. Mass arrests and detention of migrants in Moscow and St. Petersburg continue.“
The report addresses the human rights impact of migration on women in particular. Hundreds of thousands of women are left behind in Tajikistan to bring up children, working in the fields and markets, and depending on their in-laws for support. Those whose husbands stop sending money or disappear completely can find themselves destitute. Over the past several years, there has also been a sharp increase in numbers of Tajik women migrating to seek work. It is estimated that today around 15% of migrants are women. Women migrants, especially those who leave the country alone, are seen as challenging traditional roles and often suffer stigmatisation from their families and communities in Tajikistan, while in Russia they are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and violence.
In 2012, Tajikistan was examined by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. The Committee raised particular concerns about corruption among border guards and some consular staff and the lack of effective complaint mechanisms for victims of abuse.
“Consular protection for Tajik migrants in difficulty in Russia remains inadequate and the Tajik Migration Service has not established an effective complaints procedure. Cases of exploitation by employers and intermediaries, including forced labour, are not properly investigated by the authorities of either country,” said Stefania Koulaeva, head of ADC Memorial.
Since 2011, FIDH and ADC Memorial have undertaken a series of joint investigations to document the situation of Tajik migrant workers in Russia and the violence, xenophobia and serious violations of economic and social rights they face there.
*****
Interview with Stephania Koulaeva, head of the Memorial Anti-Discrimination Centre, on the situation of migrants in Russia
At the end of October the Russian government launched a huge operation called Migrant 2014 to crack down on migrants in an irregular situation in Russia. FIDH and ADC Memorial reported 7,000 arrests during the operation. What happened to those migrants and their families? Where are they now?
When we first reported on the 7,000 arrests, Migrant 2014 had only just begun. According to official figures published by the Moscow police and Moscow department of the Federal Migration Service (FMS, by the end of the operation on 4 November, over 50,000 migrants had been arrested by the police. Almost 2,000 expulsions were conducted and hundreds of migrants were detained. Simultaneously, the FMS in Moscow carried out a wave of inspections that resulted in the expulsion of 1,500 people. Another 3,000 people were barred from re-entry. The total revenue from penalties imposed on these migrants was almost 50,000,000 rubles (approximately 1 million Euros.)
Repression of migrants in Moscow alone during the week-long operation resulted in more than 3,500 expulsions and tens of thousands of cases of administrative punishment.
As to the current whereabouts of the arrested migrants, we can assume that many of them had to leave the country, often with a ban on coming back for a number of years. Although others could continue their life and work in Russia, they have had to pay a high price for permission to do so.
What does this operation say about the Russian government’s approach to migration? How does the Russian migration policy impact other countries in the region?
The Russian government policy on migration is controversial. On the one hand, it has close ties to the main business structures that employ migrant workers, in such fields as construction, communal services, and sales. This system allows Russia to benefit from a cheap labour force without spending on social needs. On the other hand, the very people who profit from the hard work and low wages of migrants are the ones who organised the operations against them, and use xenophobic rhetoric in the government-controlled media in order to pander to nationalist sentiments of the population. Migrants have become scapegoats for the immense problems that Russia now faces on the political and economic level, despite the fact that the country cannot function without migrant work.
The Russian government plays a complicated strategic game in the region on migration issues. For example, Russia allows Tajik migrant workers to work in Russia in exchange for military and geopolitical support from Tajikistan. Tajikistan meanwhile benefits from the remittances that working migrants send back to their families.
What are the main problem faced by migrants in Russia?
Migrants in Russia face a multitude of problems, including widespread discrimination, the stigma of illegality, the risk of detention and deportation, and xenophobia, in particular towards migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. Those who are not formally employed face a prohibition on staying in Russia longer than three months, which, in practice, forces almost all children of migrants into illegal status.
Migrant workers receive lower wages for the very same work done by Russian nationals and suffer from the absence of social security in case of illness, injury or death.
Conditions of detention are another major problem. There is an absence of judicial control over the duration of detention of migrants accused of violating migration laws, which can last up to two years on purely administrative grounds.
These problems are compounded by the lack of support demonstrated by the migrants’ countries of origin. In some cases, such as in Uzbekistan, migrants even face repression from their government for working abroad.
Editor’s Note. I have lightly edited this article to make it more readable.
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Migrant workers are leaving Petersburg: soon there won’t be anyone to work in construction and communal services
Elena Rotkevich
December 17, 2014 Gorod 812
On January 1, new rules for migrant workers, allowing them to work almost anywhere without restrictions, will be introduced in Russia. The authorities hope this will increase the flow of cheap labor from the CIS. In fact, the opposite is happening.
The Russian Federal Migration Service, which initiated the new rules, has said they fundamentally change the approach to labor migration. As of January 1, 2015, quotas will be abolished on the numbers of migrant workers from the CIS and other visa-free countries who can be employed in Russia.
The need to obtain a work permit will also be abolished. Instead of this document, migrants will need to buy a license. Its price will be different in each region, as set by the local authorities. In Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, it will cost 3,000 rubles; in Moscow, 4,000 rubles. As of January 1, each legally employed migrant worker, except for those who still have valid, previously issued documents, must have this license, no matter where they work.
The abolition of quotas means that any number of migrant workers can be employed at any enterprise. When there were quotas, the number of migrant workers in each sector of municipal services and industry were strictly regulated. For example, in 2014, only 164,000 migrants could legally work in Petersburg within the quotas. [Although the actual number of migrants working in the city is undoubtedly much higher.]
As of 2015, this ceiling will not be limited in any way. It would seem that the city should be flooded with migrants, but it isn’t, and the reason is the economy.
“The quotas are abolished, but there won’t be more migrants. They are already leaving the city. If the exchange rate of the ruble does not grow, they will stop coming here altogether, because it is not worth it. Salaries paid in rubles are not increasing in value. For example, if a person working at a construction site used to get 25,000 rubles a month, and that was roughly equivalent to 750–800 dollars, now it is worth 400–450 dollars. That does not even cover the person’s expenses. It is easier to make money at home,” says Suratbek Abdurahimov, chair of Uzbegim, the Uzbek National Cultural Autonomy of Saint Petersburg.
According to him, it makes no difference to migrants whether they have to get a license or a work permit. It is expensive and troublesome all the same. There is, however, an obvious drawback: after the new rules are adopted, the official price of a license in Petersburg will increase from two to three thousand rubles. But the real price of the document cannot be predicted at all. Given the cost of medical certificates, insurance, and everything else, migrants now pay between twelve and fourteen thousand rubles for a license, while getting a work permit costs around twenty thousand rubles. Abdurahimov believes that under the new rules a license will also cost at least twenty thousand. It is cheaper to stay at home.
Mahmut Mamatmuminov, board chair of the Assistance Fund for Migrant Workers from Central Asia, agrees with him.
“Of course, soon it will make more sense economically to stay at home. First, because of the exchange rate. Second, because migrants have to take exams in Russian, history, and law. It is hard: even an educated person finds these tests confusing. I have heard that exam certificates are already selling on the black market. Also, the number of migrants is dropping because the Federal Migration Service in Petersburg has banned many people from entering the country for different violations. According to Federal Migrant Service statistics, more than a million migrants have been banned from entering Russia over the past year,” says Mamatmuminov.
The major sectors in Petersburg where guest workers are employed are construction, retail, street cleaning and housing maintenance, services, and transportation. According to experts, if migrant workers pull up stakes and fly home en masse, there will soon be no one to do this work in Petersburg.
Staunton, December 20 – The collapse of the ruble and the test of Russian language knowledge they will soon be required to take are prompting gastarbeiters in the Russian Federation to leave in massive numbers, with the leader of the Federation of Migrants now predicting that more than a quarter of them will depart by early next year.
While some Russians may be glad to see them go, their departure will make it more difficult for the Russian economy to escape the looming recession. But even more seriously, their return to their homelands in such numbers will create problems there, given that none of those economies can easily absorb them.
The returning migrants are thus likely to become a source of additional instability in places that in many cases already are far from stable, and to the extent they are not absorbed into the economies, some of them may become recruits for radical Islamist groups that want to overthrow the existing order.
Mukhammed Amin, the head of the Federation of Migrants of Russia, told Newsru.com yesterday that “more than 25 percent” of the more than 10 million immigrant workers in Russia plan to return home or move to other countries in the coming months (newsru.com/russia/19dec2014/ishod.html).
He suggested that the main reasons for that are two: the collapse of the ruble exchange rate means they have less money to send home – most of their transfer payments have been in dollars – and concerns about the impact and cost of the test of Russian language knowledge they will be forced to take as of January 1.
Karomat Sharipov, the head of the Tajik Labor Migrants organization, confirmed that this is the case and said that many of his co-nations intend to leave Russia. He added that because jobs at home are scarce, at least some of them might join the ranks of extremist groups as mercenaries in order to support their families.
Russia’s Federal Migration Service had already reported that with the decline in the value of the ruble, the size of transfer payments by gastarbeiters in Russia to their homelands had sharply fallen (newsru.com/finance/12dec2014/migrants.html). That too will harm the economies of countries like Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan from which most migrants have come.
Some Russians are pleased by the departure of the gastarbeiters, either because they view such people as culturally alien or because they think that such foreigners are taking jobs that Russians should get. But Russian officials are more concerned by the possibility that those leaving will join radical Islamist groups or become part of “so-called ‘Jihad tourism.’”
That term refers to Muslims from one country who travel to another to take part in and make money from radical Islamist groups fighting elsewhere. According to the Russian government, there are at least 1500 such people from CIS countries now fighting for the Islamic State; the departure of the gastarbeiters will likely boost that number further.
Russian officials fear that these people will not only destabilize neighboring countries but also in some cases return to push their causes within the borders of the Russian Federation, yet another frightening consequence of Vladimir Putin’s policies in Ukraine.
Hotels in Petersburg Say “Ni Hao!”
September 30, 2014 Fontanka.ru
Petersburg hoteliers have begun negotiations on joining the China Today program, which helps participants gain greater visibility among tour agents and tourists in China. They are doing this because they need to replace the falling number of tourists from Europe and the US. Fontanka found out what tourists from China want to see in cafes and restaurants.
In the light of this past summer’s political events, Russia’s economy has turned towards the countries of the East. The tourist business, which organizes leisure in Russia for foreigners, has not been fighting the general trend. After the imposition of sanctions, the flow of tourists from Europe has declined, as has been visible on the streets of Petersburg even taking the season into account. As Fontanka learned, several major Petersburg hotels have begun negotiations with the association World without Borders, which unites inbound tourism tour operators, about participating in the China Friendly program.
Participation in the program helps hotels obtain certification for compliance with the requirements of Chinese tourists, who are supposed to replace European guests in the new political and economic reality. Vetted hotels are eligible to use the China Friendly status in their ad campaigns. It helps them to attract the attention of both Chinese tour operators choosing Russian hotels to accommodate their own customers or a Russian operator for collaboration, and Chinese tourists who prefer to travel on their own. Mikhail Vislin, the association’s executive director, refused to name the Petersburg hoteliers ready to open their doors wide to the Chinese. (At present, no Petersburg hotels have this status, which is attractive to visitors from the Middle Kingdom.)
“Unlike tourists from Europe and America, tourists from China have significant cultural peculiarities. They have a quite particular mindset. Moreover, the language barrier is a much more acute problem for them. Despite the fact that the Russian tourist industry is gradually becoming more oriented towards the Chinese, to date only a few sites are comfortable for them to visit,” says the program’s official web site.
China Friendly’s compliance requirements for hotels are posted on the program’s information portal. Most of them concern duplication of information in Chinese. To obtain certification, a hotel must develop a Chinese-language version of its site, put location information in Chinese in its rooms, and hire employees who know Chinese. Rooms must also always have green tea with a tea set and electrical sockets with the standard plug used in the PRC. Guests’ breakfasts must be adapted to Chinese tradition.
“The buffet at the hotel restaurant must include some elements of Chinese cuisine. It should include boiled eggs, steamed vegetables cut into small pieces easy to grab with chopsticks, chicken, and baozi—small dumplings with different fillings. Chinese porridge, a watery, salty rice porridge similar in structure [sic] to broth, must also be cooked,” explained China Today project director Anna Sibirkina.
Russia and China plan to increase the number of students studying under mutual exchange programs to 100,000 in five years, Russian media has reported, shortly after Russia canceled a popular exchange program with the U.S.
The announcement came ahead of a meeting between Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang in Moscow on Monday, when several dozen cooperation agreements on trade, investment, energy and cultural affairs were expected to be signed.
Currently, about 25,000 Chinese students are attending Russian colleges and universities, while 15,000 Russian students are studying in China. Moscow and Beijing plan to raise the total number to 100,000 by 2020, Interfax reported Monday, citing an unidentified source from the Russian Cabinet.
As part of the 2014-15 Russia-China Youth Friendly Exchange program — a bilateral year set up to strengthen cultural ties — more than 300 events in both countries were scheduled throughout the year, with more than 7,000 students having taken part so far, according to the spokesperson.
The spokesperson also announced that China had taken first place in the number of visits to Russia this year, with more than 500,000 Chinese citizens coming to Russia in the first six months of this year alone.
“Last year, China came in second by the number of tourists visiting Russia [with 370,000 visits]. But in the first six months of 2014 alone, China has already taken the leading position — more than 500,000 Chinese citizens have visited Russia so far, and 135,000 of them were on tourist trips,” the source was cited as saying by the TASS news agency.
The apparent surge in Russia’s popularity comes as the country pivots toward China amid deteriorating relations with the West.
[…]
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Locals: Chinese Are Massively Eating Domestic Cats in the Leningrad Region Rosbalt.ru
SAINT PETERSBURG, October 12. Cats have been disappearing without a trace in the village of Divinsky, in Leningrad Region’s Gatchina District. Locals have conducted their own investigation and concluded that Chinese are destroying the animals. And that they are not just killing them, but using them for food.
As local resident Roza Vasilieva told Rosbalt, she has recently lost three healthy cats. The woman had a total of five four-pawed favorites, but two of them are quite old and stay at home. She has lost forever the other cats, which she let out to walk. Her neighbors have faced similar problems. Residents have tried to find the animals and posted notices, but all to no avail.
“You might think the foxes were to blame. But the foxes have long lived in the woods and don’t touch the cats,” says Roza Vasilieva.
“Yesterday, my husband went looking for the cats. He walked through all the fields, but didn’t find a single cat. But he did discover bait set out by the Chinese. They lured the cats with a wrapper soaked in some kind of narcotic. We let our cat sniff it: she just went crazy. Apparently, they drive around in a car throwing the bait, and then collect the cats. At first, we couldn’t believe that it was the Chinese, but then we concluded it was them. We are sure that they are eating the cats,” says Roza Vasilieva.
Residents were alarmed, went to the village council, and began telling other people about the problem. (“Conducting propaganda,” Vasilieva calls it.) What they fear most of all is an invasion of rats. Life in the village would be impossible without any four-pawed hunters.
“The Chinese have two bases here—in the Luga District—the village of Krasny Mayak [Red Lighthouse] and near the village of Kuznetsovo. They have about a hundred greenhouses there. Around three hundred people live there. It’s not enough that they are poisoning our water and land with their fertilizers, but now they’re also catching our cats,” the woman complains.
However, she admits that residents have not found the remains of the animals.
“They hide it all, of course,” says Roza Vasilieva.
Nevertheless, she has no doubt about what has happened to the animals.
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The Chinese Revolution in Migration
Gorod (812)
October 13, 2014
[…]
According to Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, a researcher at the Institute for National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Central Asian labor supply will run out in fifteen years or so. Instead, Chinese will work in Russia. They have now already densely “occupied” the Russian Far East and Siberia.
“Life without the Chinese is no longer conceivable in these regions. A survey was conducted in which one of the questions was, What is more important to you, relations with Moscow or relations with China? China took first place,” says Zayonchkovskaya.
The Chinese are actively cultivating the Moscow market. They have not made it to Petersburg yet. According to Zayonchkovskaya, the Chinese are good workers. They are quite adaptable, not prone to conflict, and know at least a minimum amount of Russian. In some sense, our country’s future belongs to them.
In Petersburg, the authorities have been making attempts to replace foreign guest workers with internal migrants from the provinces. According to Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, this is a futile undertaking. The population of all the surrounding small towns has already been “licked clean,” and there is just no extra manpower in Russia.
[…]
This article was published only in the print edition of Gorod (812), on page 11. Photo, above, courtesy of The St. Petersburg Times.
On October 30, 2012, a group of civil society activists in Moscow freed twelve slaves from the Produkty grocery store, owned by a Kazakhstani couple, Zhansulu Istanbekova and her husband, Saken Muzdybayev. Nearly all of those released were women from the city of Shymkent in Kazakhstan, which is also Istanbekova’s hometown. Istanbekova had at various times invited them to Moscow to work in her store. Once there, they had been robbed of their passports and forced to work without pay for twenty hours a day. They were fed a slop made from rotten vegetables, and they were beaten and raped. Some of the freed women had arrived at the store recently, but others had worked as slaves there for as long as ten years. Many of them had given birth while in captivity. Istanbekova had disposed of these children at her discretion. She shipped some of them to Kazakhstan, later declaring them dead, while others had served her family from an early age.
This is the introduction to “Slaves of Moscow,” a graphic reportage by artist Victoria Lomasko now published in English translation in a new issue of Words without Borders on migrant labor. Read the rest of this hair-raising story here.
A bill against fictitious residential registration has been approved by parliament and is likely to come into force before the end of 2013. MPs who voted for the law insisted it targeted “rubber apartments” where hundreds of people are fictitiously registered and, more broadly, illegal immigration. Lenta.Ru has read the text of the bill along with lawyers from the Public Verdict Foundation and concluded that the tightening of controls over registration and movement will directly impact Russian citizens as well.
Introduced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the bill, which has the neutral-sounding title “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation,” contains several subsections. Amendments have been made to the law on the freedom of movement of Russian citizens, the Administrative and Criminal Codes, and the law on the registration of foreign nationals by migration authorities. The preamble to the newly revised third article of the law on freedom of movement states residential registration is for informational purposes only, rather than a compulsory action. Whether someone is registered or not “cannot serve as grounds for restricting or a condition for exercising the rights and freedoms of citizens” as stipulated by the Constitution and other regulations.
This is consistent with the style in which new Russian laws are drafted: all attempts to prohibit something by law are based, allegedly, on a concern for protecting rights and freedoms. So it is in this case: a direct quotation from the Constitutional Court’s 1998 ruling that residential registration should not restrict the rights of citizens is followed by a list of the ways in which citizens will be restricted.
Thus, Russian citizens who have traveled outside their home regions must be registered within ninety days. If this does not happen, people renting housing and landlords may be held administratively or, in some cases, criminally liable. For living in an apartment without registering, tenants will be fined two to three thousand rubles [approx. 45 to 65 euros]; apartment owners, two to five thousand rubles [approx. 45 to 110 euros] and legal entities, 250 to 750 thousand rubles [approx. 5,500 to 16,500 euros]. Fictitious registration will be punishable by a fine of 100 to 250 thousand rubles, up to three years of hard labor or a similar term of imprisonment under Article 322 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.
— Andrei Kozenko, “Who’s no longer a tenant here: how the ‘rubber apartments’ law will impact Russians,” Lenta.Ru, December 18, 2013
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There is a stark political economy to the illegalization of migrant labour that goes unremarked in much of the election-season hand-wringing over the city’s growing population of nelegaly (“illegals” in derogatory officialese). For one thing, demand for labour that is low-paid, verbally contracted, un-unionised, and flexible far exceeds the city’s (deliberately minimalist) quota of work permits. Perhaps as many as four fifths of the city’s migrant workers are therefore employed without an official work permit, or individual patent permitting private employment. There is an open market for official work permits, as well as a (near indistinguishable) market for fakes. As I have explored in my research on the difficulty of creating documented selves in Russia, the degrees of intermediation for obtaining a work permit means that “cleans” and “fakes” are often distinguishable only at the point that they are checked by the police.
At the same time, the gulf between average wages and average rental costs in the city mean that many migrant workers live in conditions that violate administrative regulations: in multi-tenant “rubber apartments” (rezinovye kvartiry) without corresponding residential registration, in container-dormitories on building sites, or in the unventilated basement of a multi-storey apartment building entirely unrecorded within city housing stock. The choices here are stark: for those on a typical migrant wage in the catering sector of 15-17,000 roubles (around £300-£330 per month) the only way to make ends meet in a context where the rental costs exceed average wages three or four-fold is to share an apartment illegally with 15 or 20 other tenants, paying money to a notional “landlord” (another migrant who takes a cut) and paying off the local policeman to ensure that the apartment is protected from raids. In a city where the 2010 census identified over 92% of the city’s registered population to be ethnically Russian (russkii), the economic constraints upon legal migrant labour have made for an easy popular conflation between being visibly non-Russian, being a “guest worker” (gastarbaiter), and being an illegal.
Xenophobia is not new in Moscow. But the combination of a laissez-faire wage policy (with a race to the bottom for undocumented labour), together with excessive restrictions on legally documented labour, and the widespread use of bribes to circumvent administrative regulations has allowed for the normalisation of a casual racism in which discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is justified through concerns for security and comfort—or protection against “illegals”. One commercial website offering temporary accommodation to non-Muscovites, for instance, cites its own policy of ethnic selection in the following terms:
[W]e don’t have racist prejudices, but today the situation has developed such that the largest demand for a place to stay in Moscow comes from Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians. In accordance with the existing demand for inexpensive hostel accommodation in Moscow, we attempt only to house people of Slavic appearance (litsa slavianskoi vneshnosti), for the comfortable living conditions of all residents, and in so doing avoid any conflictual situations.
— Madeleine Reeves, “Mayoral politics and the migrant economy: talking elections and ‘illegals’ in Moscow,” cities@manchester, September 5, 2013
Not is only Georgy Poltavchenko, Petersburg’s unelected governor, a capable administrator and a pious Orthodox Christian, he is also, as he revealed last week during a passionate speech delivered at a special powwow with law enforcement officials and “representatives of ethnic diasporas,” a psychic, a mind reader or remote viewer capable of hearing what migrant workers in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are saying as they depart for the former capital of All the Russias (apparently, to wreak mayhem, judging by further remarks made the governor and others at the high-level confab):
“So your countrymen travel to our country, to our city, in particular. They travel from distant villages there and so on. And just as they’re about to board the plane or the train going to Russia, they say, ‘We’re going there because the Russians don’t know how to work! They’re all drunkards. They’re all loafers!’ But members of the nation to which I myself belong, the Russian people, over the course of a thousand years created an enormous state along with other peoples. And if those loafers and drunkards hadn’t built the Russian state, who knows what the people who come to our country thinking such thoughts would be doing nowadays. I want everyone to remember what I’m about to say: the Russian people are a people that I won’t permit anyone to walk all over!”*
* As quoted in: Maria Gordyakova, “Make yourselves at home, but don’t forget you’re just visiting,” Gorod 812, December 2, 2013, p. 12; the online version of the article (which has a different title) can be accessed here.
Friday Dragnet
October 26, 2013
Svetlana Gannushkina grani.ru
On Friday evening, at half past five, I went from the offices of Civic Assistance, on Olimpiisky Prospekt, to a board meeting at the Memorial Human Rights Center. I was not feeling well for some reason, and two of our charges escorted me to the Dostoevskaya metro station.
Five minutes later, I exited the metro at Tsvetnoi Bulvar station and immediately heard my mobile ring. It was my escorts calling.
“We’ve been detained by the police. They’ve nabbed us and are taking us to Meshchanskoye police precinct.”
“Did they check your papers?”
“They didn’t check anything. They said they’d sort things out at the precinct.”
“But what happened?”
“Nothing happened. They just bundled us into a car, and that was that.”
“Put one of the police officers in the car on the phone.”
There was a pause.
“They won’t do it.”
“Show them your papers!”
“They refuse to look at them.”
Both my escorts are Uzbek nationals, and their papers are in order. One has a certificate stating that his application for refugee status is under review, while the other has a individual work permit. Both are registered with the migration service.
When I arrived at Memorial, I called the on-duty prosecutor, as Moscow city prosecutor Sergei Kudeneyev advised us to do only yesterday at a meeting with the prosecutor’s public advisory council. At first, the on-duty prosecutor opined that he had nothing to do with it, and then he suggested that our detainees had no papers. But a reference to the Moscow city prosecutor worked: the on-duty prosecutor wrote down the names of our detainees and my name, and promised to call the Meshchanskoe precinct.
Then I called Alexander Kulikovsky, a member of the Moscow police’s public advisory council. He went to Meshchanskoe precinct. There were about a hundred people there who had been detained the same way as our guys: the police had simply grabbed them on the street, picking out only passersby of non-Slavic appearance.
Around half past eight, the precinct was called and the names of my escorts were mentioned. The guys heard this, raised a ruckus and demanded to be released immediately. The officers at the precinct did not particularly mind letting them go, but as they did, they said, “You had no business going to the mosque.”
It was only then we realized what had happened. There is a mosque not far from Dostoevskaya metro station: all its alleged visitors had been caught up in the dragnet.
Alexander Kulikovsky called me at half past eleven at night: there were still around fifty detainees at Meshchanskoe precinct.
Apparently, this is how Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin is fulfilling his promise “not to leave a single place in the city where illegal immigrants could take shelter, monitor the criminally inclined and drug addicted, and step up efforts in the fight against gambling and illicit smoking blends.”
So this is the so-called fight against illegal immigration and crime in Moscow we are now going to be witnessing every Friday?
iuf.ru
September 2, 2013 The Cost of the World Cup FZ-108 primarily threatens hundreds of thousands of Russian workers
A serious discussion has erupted since the contents of the notorious “2018 World Cup Law” (or FZ-108, for short)* were revealed to the general public. The focus of the discussion has been the consequences of removing restrictions on employing migrant laborers and the possibility of their runaway exploitation if the law’s clauses on voluntary contracts (which place them beyond the reach of a number of articles in the Labor Code) are enforced.
However, the people most threatened by FZ-108 are Russian citizens.
When the discussion of FZ-108 was getting underway, many in Russia were disturbed by the fledgling campaign against “illegal migration” recently undertaken by law enforcement and local authorities in several areas of the country, a campaign involving police raids and mass imprisonment of migrants in special camps, where they were forced to live almost on the bare pavement, without electricity and other basic conveniences. Given this background, it was unsurprising and even natural that the public would pay more attention to the clauses in FZ-108 dealing with the employment of foreign nationals and stateless persons. The perception exists that the law has nothing to do with Russian citizens.
But is this really true? The answer is simple: no, it isn’t!
* * * * *
Major sporting events like the World Cup always entail the generation of tens of thousands of jobs in construction, light industry, building maintenance, catering, retailing, transportation and so on. Yes, these jobs appear only for a few years, but wise use of such opportunities can give the economy a stimulus for decades to come. Increasing employment leads to growth in domestic spending and private savings, which, in turn, improve demographics. These are the three pillars of sustainable economic development.
But all that happens only when the new jobs are decent, meaning the wages they pay allow people to spend money, including on major and long-term purchases (e.g., home appliances, furniture and cars), and maybe even take out a home loan, and the terms of employment enable them to feel confident in the future, save money, and start and raise a family.
However, the wording of FZ-108 makes it clear that none of these things are expected to happen in Russia. Instead, the authorities are planning to tackle the job of preparing and staging the 2018 World Cup with slave labor, thus definitely ruling out any positive effects both for workers and the economy as a whole. The only outcome of this championship will be the personal gain of a few.
Why is such a conclusion warranted? The fact is that FZ-108, unlike, say, FZ-310 (which deals with the 2014 Sochi Olympics),** expressly stipulates significant exceptions to labor laws, exceptions that will diminish job quality. They are mainly concentrated in the controversial Article 11 (Chapter 4), “The Characteristics of Work Related to the Staging of the Events.”
First, Article 11 gives employers the right to establish long working hours unilaterally (Section 1).
Second, Article 11 allows employers to define the manner of payment for work at night, on weekends and on public holidays without regard to the stipulations of Articles 154, 113 and 153 of the Labor Code. Moreover, this can be done through collective bargaining, through the inclusion of such clauses in individual employment contracts or, more generally, through the enactment of “local regulations,” that is, yet again, unilaterally (Sections 2 and 3).
Third, overtime pay is abolished. Employers may simply compensate for overtime by “providing additional leisure time,” but the wishes of workers are not taken into account, and Article 152 of the Labor Code is effectively revoked (Section 4).
Finally, Section 5 abolishes such nonsense as the provision of elective annual leaves at times convenient for workers (such guarantees are given in Article 122 of the Labor Code, for example, to women before and after maternity leave). Like the rest of the lives of employees, holidays are governed by the “work plans of relevant organizations for preparing and staging the sporting events.”
However, as Vladimir Yurasov, a partner at the Moscow law firm Knyazev and Partners, rightly noted during an interview on RBK-TV, all these rules are clearly contrary to the Russian Federal Constitution. Article 37 of the Constitution states that everyone has the right to remuneration for work without suffering any form of discrimination, and that employment contracts guarantee workers statutory working hours, weekends and holidays, and paid annual leave, as stipulated by federal law. FZ-108 assumes that if workers are employed in the “preparation and staging” of the World Cup, this may very well serve as grounds for discriminating against them in terms of compensation, working hours and the right to paid leave and time off. In this case, “local regulations” are declared primary, rather than the Labor Code and Constitution.
Of course, these draconian measures do not apply to all workers in Russia, only to “FIFA employees, FIFA subsidiaries, FIFA business partners, confederations, national football associations, the Russian Football Union, the Russia 2018 Organizing Committee and its affiliated organizations, whose work activities are related to the staging of events.” The most interesting phrases in this clause are “FIFA business partners” and “work activities […] related to the staging of events.” Let us consider them in the order they appear.
As Article 2 of the law explains, a “FIFA business partner” is a “legal or natural person that has a contractual relationship with FIFA or its subsidiaries and is involved in events.” The list of such individuals and companies could prove to be quite long, because all commercial partners (including sponsors and licensees), suppliers, agents, broadcasters and so on will be included. Moreover, the provisions of the law apply not only to the “business partners” themselves but also to their subcontractors and subsidiaries.
Because preparations for the World Cup have just kicked off, the list of “FIFA business partners” is still incomplete. At present, for example, we know the names of only three companies that will serve as corporate partners to the 2018 World Cup: Coca-Cola, Hyundai-Kia and Anheuser-Busch InBev. In all, FIFA will have thirty-four such partners by 2018. Of course, all these companies have subsidiaries and subcontractors—personnel and temp agencies, construction and security companies, cleaning and catering companies, firms involved in maintaining equipment and buildings, supplying brand-name goods, producing and placing ads, and so on.
Another way to assess the scope of the problem is to compare the 2018 World Cup with another sporting event that will be hosted by Russia, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. We already know the names of all its suppliers, partners and licensees. Let’s take a look at the list.
• Worldwide Partners of the Olympic Games: Coca-Cola, AtoS, Dow Chemical, General Electric, McDonald’s, OMEGA, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Visa
• General Partners of Sochi 2014: Aeroflot, Megafon, Rostelecom, Bosco di Ciliegi, Volkswagen Group Rus, Sberbank of Russia, Russian Railways, Rosneft
• Official Partners of the 2014 Olympic Games: Ingosstrakh, PwC
• Suppliers of Sochi 2014: Avaya, Baltika, EF English First, Kommersant Publishing House, Abrau Durso, Adecco Group, EXECT Business Training, Kelly Services CIS, Detech, Microsoft Russia, GAZ Group, Scania-Rus
In addition, nearly seventy companies have signed licensing agreements with the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee.
It is obvious there will be no fewer companies wishing to link their logos to the World Cup. Only unlike the employees of Olympics partners, employees of FIFA’s business partners will be forced to waive many of their workplace rights.
But perhaps only a small number of workers will be affected by this restriction of rights? Unfortunately, the wording of the law gives no grounds for such a hypothesis. The law mentions employees whose work is related to the preparation and staging of the World Cup. However, the wording is utterly unspecific. How do we differentiate the work a company does in preparation for the World Cup from its other activities? For example, Coca-Cola produces beverages emblazoned with the World Cup logo. Does this constitute work performed as a FIFA business partner or not? Can it be construed as having to do with the preparation and staging of the World Cup? What about cellular network development work done by mobile phone companies? Or the introduction of new direct flights by air carriers? Without going out of our way to abuse common sense, we can construe nearly all commercial activity by FIFA business partners as preparation for the World Cup.
Of particular concern is the more than probable inclusion among the business partners of such companies as Adecco Group, EXECT Business Training and Kelly Services CIS – that is, companies still operating in the legal gray zone of personnel services. Given that Bill No. 451173-5, better known as the law banning contingent labor, which has already suffered serious damage and almost been stripped of its original intent, was returned for a second reading in the State Duma, the de facto support and promotion of these companies by official Russian sporting organizations and state agencies looks like a targeted attack on the quality of employment.
How many Russians will be affected by these measures at the end of the day? If we accept the flawed logic of FZ-108, we can agree with Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko that the concept of the World Cup has been developed and adopted by FIFA in such a way that almost seventy percent of the country’s population will be involved in preparing for it and staging it.
Does this mean, as some journalists have predicted, the return of serfdom? The answer depends largely on the actions of the trade unions.
_____
* The full text (in the original Russian) of the Russian Federal Law “On the Preparation and Staging of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in the Russian Federation and the Amendment of Certain Russian Federal Legislative Acts” can be found here: http://www.rg.ru/2013/06/11/chempionat-dok.html
** The full text (in the original Russian) of the Russian Federal Law “On the Organization and Staging of the Twenty-Second Olympic Winter Games and Eleventh Winter Paralympic Games of 2014 in Sochi, the Development of Sochi as a Mountain Resort and the Amendment of Certain Russian Federal Legislative Acts” can be found here: http://www.rg.ru/2011/06/06/olimp-dok.html
http://liva.com.ua/tajikistan-crisis.html The Forgotten Country
Farrukh Kuziyev The only stable resource supporting the national economy is migrant laborers. Their remittances account for the lion’s share of the country’s GDP.
In my view, the Soviet Union’s collapse had the most devastating impact on Tajikistan.
First, Tajikistan was one of the most heavily subsidized Soviet republics. In some years, sixty percent of the republic’s budget consisted of federal subventions, and eighty percent of the budgets of some areas in the republic were subsidized. Tajikistan could be considered Central Asia’s industrial, economic and cultural periphery. Despite the fact that a number of different enterprises were built in the republic itself, the region’s real centers were Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The steep terrain (ninety-three percent of the country is mountainous) significantly increased the costs of transporting goods and people, as well as the construction of important facilities, which was paid out of the Soviet budget.
Second, because of its specific geographical location, Tajikistan was heavily dependent on neighboring republics, especially Uzbekistan. The closure of the Uzbek border has had grave consequences for the country’s food and energy security. The railway lines to Tajikistan run through Uzbek territory, and now trains carrying vital goods idle for long periods at the borders; in cases of conflict, they are not let through at all. The once-integrated Soviet energy system, under which Tajikistan supplied surplus electrical energy to Uzbekistan during the summer, in exchange for electricity, fuels and lubricants in the winter, has been destroyed. Many of the cross-border power lines have been disconnected, and Tajikistan cannot afford natural gas and oil. It is agriculture that has primarily suffered as a result. Food prices are among the highest in the post-Soviet countries.
Third, immediately after the Soviet Union’s collapse, in 1992, unrest broke out in the capital, Dushanbe, with such Islamist parties as Rastokhez (Rebirth) playing a central role. This led to a bloody civil war between the United Tajik Opposition and government forces. Both sides engaged in looting, property seizures and atrocities, resulting in the most profound social and economic trauma for the country. According the most conservative estimates, more than 175,000 people were killed in the civil war, and hundreds of thousands of people became refugees. The country’s intellectual elite—teachers, scholars, politicians and artists—fled the country, leaving it at the mercy of militant clans. Tons of narcotics and weapons constantly flow into Tajikistan from neighboring Afghanistan, and members of terrorist groups slip through the border as well. That is why in recent years government troops and police have been involved in armed clashes with drug traffickers and religious extremists in the east of the country, for example in the Pamirs in 2011 and 2012. The banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Hizb ut-Tahrir are active in the north of Tajikistan.
The collapse of secular education and the cultural sector has led to an intensive Islamization of the population, especially in rural and suburban areas. In addition, relations with Uzbekistan have deteriorated, primarily because of the “water problem,” caused by the Tajik government’s plans to build the Ragun hydroelectric power station on the Amu Darya River. China has already received part of the Pamir Mountains that once belonged to Tajikistan, and now lays claim to another section of the mountains in the Murghab district, causing widespread discontent among local residents.
Economically, Tajik society is in the midst of a deep stagnation, caused by the mass migration of skilled laborers and young professionals. This is facilitated by the total incompetence and corruption of the authorities, who completely ignore the need to support education and health care, the construction of transportation networks, housing and roads, science, and much else. In terms of its level of development, Tajikistan has been compared to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, the only stable resource supporting the national economy is migrant laborers, most of whom work in Russia. Their remittances account for the lion’s share of the country’s GDP.
Three relatively independent camps constitute the main political forces in Tajikistan.s The first is the political and economic elite, distinguished by its close clan and family ties, which collectively supports the current president, Emomali Rahmon. The second camp is the liberal opposition, whom we might call national-liberals. This group includes businessmen in Tajikistan itself and outside the country. Although all opposition forces are united in their desire to remove the Rahmon clan from power, this camp’s position on solving social issues and Tajikistan’s future is not clear. The opposition’s political horizon is probably limited to the demand for a change of elites. However, both groups of politicians actively employ nationalist rhetoric.
Finally, there is the Islamist underground, concentrated in different areas of the country, mainly in rural areas. This movement’s stated objective is the overthrow of the current ruling elite and the establishment of a Shariah Islamic state. The Islamist movement is quite active. Aside from terrorist activities (attacks on military convoys, murders of policemen, stockpiling of weapons), Tajik Islamists are engaged in extensive outreach work, recruiting followers on social networks, and distributing leaflets and brochures. In addition, they have extensive contacts with Islamists in neighboring Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
With the exception of a few activists, journalists and bloggers, there is practically no secular intelligentsia in Tajikistan capable of giving critical voice to a social issues agenda. Prospects for the future are thus bleak. The authorities attempt to rule the country in the repressive style of autocratic monarchs, and the only ideologies capable of consolidating society are the religious and nationalist discourses. Most likely, we can expect a local variation on Islamic revolution to be implemented here. Nearly everything in Tajikistan is ripe for this: the long years of social and economic stagnation, the collapse of the secular education system, the extremely difficult economic situation in the provinces and the unresolved conflicts left over from the civil war. There is almost no hope for a peaceful outcome.
Editor’s Note. Reader Olja Jitlina made the following comment on this article, which she has kindly permitted us to reprint here:
In the autumn of 2011, I spent six weeks in the Sughd Province of Tajikistan, in the capital city of Khujand (formerly Leninabad), and the towns of Chkalov and Taboshar, which was once a closed town where uranium was mined. There had been a huge cotton mill in Leninabad. Nowadays, a very small number of the production units, which have been bought by Italian companies, are functioning. When you travel north from Khujand, you first pass pomegranate fields, then the mineral-rich mountains begin. Near one village there are mines, which have been acquired either by a Chinese or an Italian company, depending on whom you talk to. Gold and other minerals are extracted there without compliance with any environmental and health standards. According to the locals, the soil has become unsuitable for agriculture, and the miners die after working there for five years. As you approach Taboshar, Geiger counter readings go off the scale. The uranium tails in the large mines a kilometer from this beautiful semi-ghost town were not properly buried. The locals distinguish the town’s radioactive irrigation ditches (there is no running water) and the ones whose water is suitable for farming. By Russian standards, the prices are ridiculously low. But for local, whose wages amount to twenty or thirty dollars a month, they are sky-high. People survive mainly through agriculture and remittances from migrant workers in their families.
iuf.ru Migrant Labor in Russia: From Golyanovo to the 2018 World Cup
On July 11, 2013, the Russian Federal Law “On the Preparation and Staging of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup in the Russian Federation and the Amendment of Certain Russian Federal Legislative Acts” came into force without any uproar, something inadmissible in such delicate matters. (Hereafter referred to as FZ-108 for brevity’s sake, the full text of the law in the original Russian can be found here.)
While the name of the law might not sound too promising, its content opens up truly outstanding prospects for any Russian employer even tangentially connected with the 2018 World Cup. FZ-108 establishes special conditions for the employment of “foreign nationals and stateless persons” (i.e., migrant laborers) involved in the preparations and staging of the World Cup and Confederations Cup.
Article 9 Chapter 4 generously eliminates the need to obtain permits for the employment of migrant labor and notify the relevant authorities of the conclusion or termination of contracts with foreign workers, or of their arrival or departure. Nor are migrant workers themselves required to obtain work permits. Quotas for the issuance of visas and work permits are waived for those employers involved with the 2018 World Cup. Article 10 is even more interesting: it abolishes all regulation and control over the recruitment of foreign nationals and stateless persons as volunteers—that is, it practically and plainly permits employing migrants without remuneration. Article 11 exceeds all limits of generosity. It allows employers to set long working hours right in the contracts of all workers “employed in the preparation and staging of the events” (with no explanation of what that phrase means) and waives the requirements for the compensation of night work, the compensation of work on weekends and holidays, and the duration and compensation of overtime (as stipulated by Articles 154, 113, 153, and 152, respectively, of the Russian Federal Labor Code). The icing on the cake is Article 56 Chapter 14, which exempts all payments made to migrants under labor, civil, and volunteer contracts from obligatory social security and insurance deductions.
This simplified hiring procedure is a clear incentive for employers to employ foreign workers on the widest possible scale.
Here we should stop and ask ourselves to whom FZ-108 applies. The answer: any entity that is a “FIFA business partner.” By law, this means any legal or natural person in a contractual relationship with FIFA or its subsidiaries and involved in “events.” This might be a commercial partnership agreement or an agreement for provision of services, but in any case the provisions of the law apply to the subsidiaries and subcontractors of all these “business partners.”
Thus, the list of organizations with special rights vis-à-vis workers employed in preparing the “events” is very broad. We can safely include in this list the general contractors and subcontractors involved in building the stadiums, suppliers, FIFA sponsors (all thirty-four of them!), FIFA licensees (i.e., companies that have the right to use the World Cup logo on their products), firms providing security at the World Cup, and so on. Of course, all these companies have subsidiaries and contractors—personnel and temp agencies, construction and security companies, manufacturing facilities, cleaning and catering companies, firms involved in maintaining equipment and buildings, supplying brand-name goods, producing and placing ads, and so on and so forth. By the way, the recruiting agency Kelly Services is among the official suppliers of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In light of the new law, we can easily imagine the consequences if this or any similar firm signs a contract with FIFA.
It is reasonable to assume the Russian authorities understand they will be unable to get ready for the World Cup employing only Russian citizens and are thus counting on migrant workers. Employers in construction, residential building maintenance, cleaning, retail, and other sectors where the skill requirements are low and cheap labor is the source of profits have long ago discovered this magic wand.
But we cannot help noticing that all these measures have been proposed and ratified by the same government that is literally right now organizing actual raids on migrants and imprisoning them in special camps in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, and Kaliningrad. Does this mean that the right hand of the Russian state doesn’t know what the left hand is doing? Not in the least.
All the above-named cities are hosting the 2018 World Cup.
In accordance with FZ-108, any migrant worker needs to do just one thing to obtain legal status: become involved with the preparation and staging of the World Cup or Confederations Cup, that is, enter into an employment, civil or volunteer agreement with one of the organizers of the events, or with their contractors or subcontractors. Thus, for example, a migrant from Vietnam now being held at the camp in Golyanovo, after signing a contract with some subcontractor of a World Cup licensee manufacturing mascot dolls for the championship, will be legalized de jure. De facto, however, he or she will go back to another semi-underground workplace, but now no one will be able to exercise any oversight or supervision. Now the migrants who are liberated from slavery or buried after they burn to death in sweatshops locked from the outside will be absolutely legal. It’s a sleight of hand, as they say.
The anti-migration campaign of the authorities stokes openly racist attitudes in society, shifting public attention from societal and labor issues (which had recently come to the forefront) to the search for scapegoats. Meanwhile, there is no guarantee that the practice of stripping migrant workers who are employed in the preparations for the 2018 World Cup of their rights will not be extended to all foreign workers tomorrow, and incorporated in the Russian Federal Labor Code the day after tomorrow, thus fulfilling the most cherished dreams of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
The fight against xenophobia, the persecution of migrants and the violation of their rights must, therefore, become one of the main issues on the agenda of the trade union and labor movement in Russia.
The name Golyanovo had been linked with migration even earlier, however. In the photo we see the liberated “slaves of Golyanovo,” who had been held for years in the basement of a grocery store, and their saviors from non-governmental organizations. Despite the best efforts of human rights activists, the criminal case against the slave owners has fallen apart. Photo courtesy of the LiveJournal blog Living Tomorrow.
During a fire at a garment factory in Yegorievsk, fourteen migrants from Vietnam perished. They were locked in the factory and thus could not escape to safety. A year later, punishment for the perpetrators of this crime is still a distant prospect. Photo courtesy of 1.tv.ru.
The Lakhta Center skyscraper construction site in November 2018. Photo by the Russian Reader
The Russian Reader 