The management board of the Ukrzaliznytsia public railway company has stated the need to pay market wages to the company’s employees. The corresponding statement was made during a meeting between the board of Ukrzaliznytsia and the leaderships of three trade unions, the CFTS portal reports, citing the press service of Ukrzaliznytsia.
In addition to the issue of wage increases, the problem of departure of blue-collar workers from the company, a shortage of such workers, and the need to reduce the size of the administrative staff were discussed during the meeting, which was held on 5 July.
Members of the Ukrzaliznytsia board noted that increasing salaries of railway workers would facilitate retention of workers and attraction of certain types of professionals.
Board member Marcek Zeljko said that a proposal to take a differentiated approach to determination of the percentage by which the salaries of various categories of workers in the sector would be indexed (on average 15%) was being considered. However, the final decision will be made on the basis of analysis of each profession jointly with trade unions.
As the CFTS portal earlier reported, the Trade Union of Railway and Transport Construction Workers of Ukraine has demanded that Ukrzaliznytsia’s Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun increase workers’ salaries by 20%. This demand was made during a meeting between Balczun and trade union leader Vadym Bubniak on 6 June.
Bubniak said that the former management of Ukrzaliznytsia proposed increasing salaries by reducing deductions into the Single Social Contribution, which would result in savings of UAH 4 billion, as well as by increasing freight transport tariffs.
Balczun said that Ukrzaliznytsia would first perform a financial audit before discussing the issue of increasing salaries.
