RBC Daily: “Putin discusses the training of skilled workers”
The government is consulting business leaders on how to improve the image of skilled labour.
At a recent meeting with business leaders in St Petersburg, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin discussed how the social prestige of the skilled professions could be improved. Some of the businessmen suggested that vocational education should be exempt from taxation, while others believed that the problem would be solved by replacing the word "worker" with "master." Meanwhile, the prime minister learned how a bad cafeteria could be turned into a mediocre one for $5 million.
According to Putin, vocational training has been left lagging behind by decades: many Russian vocational schools, colleges and technical schools are stuck in the 1980s. A survey conducted by OPORA Russia revealed that a shortage of highly-skilled labour was the biggest factor holding back business development, bigger even than corruption or administrative obstacles. "The St Petersburg recruitment agencies reported that they had been seeking assembly fitters and electric welders for the shipbuilding industry for over three months now," Putin said, "even though they are offering a decent salary, over 50,000 roubles per month."
The prime minister said that the quality of training is simply failing to meet employers' requirements. And joint projects are a rarity so far. "The government is ready to provide financial support for training programmes," Putin said. "In 2007-2009, we allocated 8.8 billion roubles from the federal budget as part of the national Education project. The regions matched these amounts with a further 3.2 billion roubles, and businesses provided 5.5 billion."
A quarter of vocational and technical school buildings are in a state of disrepair. Many have no cafeteria or gym. Putin asked the Ministry of Finance to help the regions out and to calculate how much it would cost.
The major owner of Severstal Alexei Mordashov told the prime minister that up to 2015, his company will spend 700 million roubles on the development of vocational training (at the Cherepovets industrial college), and asked the prime minister to exempt such investments from income tax. "This is unfair," he said. Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, agreed with him, saying that "vocational training should be a tax-free zone."
Mr Putin hesitated, but promised to think about the suggestion.
He invited a college student sitting behind Mordashov to speak. The young man named Ilya, a future food technologist, is doing an internship in the Severstal cafeteria. "Does the cafeteria have modern equipment?" Putin asked Ilya. "Not really," Ilya said honestly. "Alexei, why is that?" the prime minister asked Morsdashov, "Why are you skimping?" "We've spent $5 million in two years on renovating the cafeteria," Mordashov tried to explain himself. He said he understood the importance of the issue and promised to finish the renovation. "I will come and see what you have done," Putin said, inviting himself to visit the company.
The head of OPORA Russia Sergei Borisov told the prime minister, "We are playing catch-up with vocational education." In his words, "we have a good picture of yesterday, but we need to get a clear vision of the future." Delovaya Rossiya president Alexander Galushka believes that it is important to improve the social prestige of the skilled professions. "It matters to young people what you call them. Our certificates should be rebranded to refer to these young specialists as 'masters' not 'workers'."
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Russia's workforce is being trained at 5,244 state institutions, where currently over 2 million people are studying for their professional qualifications. Each year over 1.2 million graduates enter the labour market. In the past five years, the number of people receiving primary and secondary vocational education has decreased by 26.4% and 30.6% respectively. Skilled workers are in the highest demand in manufacturing (1.13 million people), construction (1.1 million), trade and auto repair (751,200), agriculture (517,300) and transport and communications (333,900).
Inga Vorobyova
