“Gazeta”: “Business to enter government as an employer”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has invited members of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) to take part in government meetings.
Representatives of the biggest Russian companies will now have the right to attend government sessions. RSPP President Alexander Shokhin reached this agreement at his meeting with Vladimir Putin yesterday.
Shokhin asked Putin to give the employers the right to express more promptly their opinion on the most intricate personal management and social issues. It was not done by chance. Now relations between the government, business, and trade unions are resolved at meetings of the Russian Trilateral Commission (RTC). However, the government often submits to such meetings the draft resolutions that it has already approved, Shokhin noted. As a result, the Duma has to amend these drafts when they are prepared for the second reading. Shokhin noted that this mechanism does not always make it possible to take into account the interests of all sides.
There was one more reason to request participation of big business in government meetings. They are usually attended by Mikhail Shmakov, the head of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR). "It would be good for the balance if the employers followed suit," said Shokhin.
Putin agreed. "This is a deal," he told Shokhin. The FNPR also agreed that representatives of employers should take part in government meetings, but emphasized that this should also apply to small and medium business.
Alexander Shershukov, a spokesman for the FNPR, said: "It is perfectly normal for representatives of the trade unions and employers to discuss issues that are important for business. However, the trade unions are more or less consolidated in this country, and at government meetings, the head of the FNPR expresses the position agreed upon by all trade unions. Regrettably, employers do not have an agency for representing the interests of small, medium, and big business so univocally."
By Kseniya Batanova
