▲Office space for camera operators (Magomed Teppeyev)
Office space for camera operators (Magomed Teppeyev)
Employees from the state media holding of the Russian republic Kabardino-Balkaria have appealed to the authorities over violations of their labour rights. Camera operators from KBR-Media complained of unfair working conditions, including being forced to work weekends for little remuneration.
Kabardino-Balkaria’s only independent periodical, Gazeta Yuga (The Newspaper of the South), first reported on the companits of staff at TV channel 1 KBR on 11 October.
KBR-Media’s chief camera operator, Magomed Teppeyev, told OC Media that due to the nature of their profession, in addition to five working days, he and his subordinates were forced to work weekends and public holidays for a bonus of just ₽470 ($7) per month.
According to him, employees are legally entitled to double pay for work on weekends, which would be around ₽800 ($12) for every extra day.
In addition, he said that working hours on weekends and holidays ‘often exceeds the 8 hours stipulated by law, and these extra hours are not paid for even symbolically’.
‘This has lasted for years. We are tired of working for free’, Teppeyev said.
According to him, in KBR-Media works 13 camera operators, and in weekends in average 8 of them comes to job. Together with video and text editors, directors and drivers, according to him, in weekends work 39 persons.
One operator at KBR-Media, Sufyan (not his real name), told OC Media he had worked at the station for four years, over which overtime pay had been raised repeatedly.
‘In response, the bosses would say that since we signed the labour contract in which the bonus of ₽470 is stipulated, this is how much we will get’.
Sufyan said this contract is illegal and must be revised.
‘On top of that, as far as I know, the labour contract signed between the administration and employees expired long ago, and we did not sign a new one’, he says.
Several employees of KBR-Media who spoke to OC Media also complained that late payment of salaries at Channel 1 KBR had become ‘a common occurrence’.
‘I don’t remember when I was paid vacation pay in time’, Teppeyev remarked, adding that according to Russia’s Labour Code, holiday pay must be paid no later than three days before it starts.
‘Damp even in summer’
Teppeyev told OC Media that the camera operators were forced to work in cramped conditions, with 13 people working in a space of just 18.5 square meters, 1.4 square metres per person. According to him, this was a violation of sanitary standards.
‘In these basement rooms, it’s damp even in summer. Sooner or later, work in such premises can lead to chronic diseases’, Alber Mamiyev, one camera operator, said.
Teppeyev said that less than a month ago, almost all employees of the information service of Channel 1 KBR moved to a renovated building in another district of Nalchik, but there was no room for the camera operators.
According to Teppeyev, all the camera equipment is stored in the new building.
‘Now we, operators, are located several kilometers away from our equipment, and before shooting we have to go to the new building for cameras and tripods first.’ Teppeyev added that camera operators must go to get the equipment with their own means of transportation.
‘Retaliation’
According to Teppeyev, before Gazeta Yuga reported on the issue, camera operators addressed the chairman of the television workers’ union, Murat Bottayev, who supported their demands.
‘In retaliation for this support, the leadership of KBR-Media staged the collection of employee signatures to replace Bottayev with a new labour-union leader who is more loyal to the administration. This prompted us to write an appeal to the leadership of the republic, the prosecutor’s office, and other institutions’, Teppeyev said.
According to Gazeta Yuga,the refusal of camera operators to work weekends led to the disruption in translations of television programmes into national languages on 22–23 September.
‘This was a so-called “Italian strike”, meaning employees were not going to work for legitimate reasons — illness, family circumstances, late notification, leaving work after the official working day is over, and others reasons’, Teppeyev told OC Media.
The United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin has won parliamentary majorities in two North Caucasus republics following elections which saw all current regional MPs keep their seats.
Voting began on 6 September for local elections throughout Russia, including in several parts of the North Caucasus.
These included the election of MPs to the parliaments of Kabarda-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia.
Separately, the heads of Kabarda-Balkaria and Ingushetia were elected by the local
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday visited Kabarda–Balkaria, North Ossetia, and Chechnya, reportedly for the first time in over a decade.
Putin visited Beslan in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Beslan School Siege on 1 September, and the Russian University of Special Forces in Grozny.
The Russian president had last visited North Ossetia in 2008, four years after the siege of the No. 1 School in Beslan by a group of armed North Caucasian militants led by Chechen guerrilla
Russian police have questioned the parents of an exiled Circassian activist from Kabarda–Balkaria.
On 6 August, RFE/RL reported that police visited the home of Circassian activist Martin Kochesoko’s parents.
Kochesoko is the head of the Circassian organisation Khabze, and is currently based in Turkey.
‘According to them, they came formally to look around and ask questions, that they are obliged to do this, that this is an order from above’, Kochesoko told OC Media.
While Kochesoko st
A member of the Russian State Duma has demanded that several people who did not stand for the national anthem in Kabarda–Balkaria be punished.
On Friday, Andrei Kartapalov, who chairs the Duma Defence Committee, published footage purportedly at a graduation ceremony in the Russian republic. It showed several attendees, including children, remaining seated during the Russian national anthem. Kartapalov later cited media as saying that some of them ‘covered their ears with their hands’ as t
