"This is us from Kronstadt!"
Last summer, the authorities of the legendary Russian fortress city in the Gulf of Finland decided on a unique socio-economic experiment - they replaced all the migrant janitors with their countrymen.
Strangers do not go here
Administratively, the island of Kotlin, on which stands the fortress city of Kronstadt, is an ordinary district of St. Petersburg. In reality, Kronstadt is a different epoch, a different lifestyle, other people. As a rule, the naval technical intelligentsia, officers, whole naval dynasties and military retirees. Our guide, an employee of the local housing and communal services, is also from the military - you can not even ask, can be seen from the bearing Explains the correspondents of "KP", accustomed to the Moscow struggle for survival on asphalt:
- See, he misses us in advance. He has a disturbance on the right. So what if he drove up to the crossroads earlier? He misses, so it’s customary to drive. You know, sometimes this politeness is even annoying if you are in a hurry ... but you have to be polite. Everyone knows each other!
Until 1996, Kronstadt was a closed city. Tourists, of course, were allowed in, and alien visitors without a purpose were turned back - naval patrols were on duty at the pier where the ships were resorting. Before the construction of the dam, Kronstadt had no land connection with the land, and this fact left a serious imprint on the mentality of the indigenous islanders. And Kronstadt has always been famous for its zero crime rate, until a trickle from the migration flow that fills Peter, did not turn into a fortress city.
The first conflicts and problems began in the mid-2000s. The city began to be intensively developed by visitors from the so-called trading nations. They behaved with the locals ... as usual, and the city leadership, along with the command of the naval base, decided on an unprecedented step that was not advertised. Military patrols began to walk around the night Kronstadt. They no longer had the authority to detain visitors, Kronstadt became an "open city", but for some time naval it turned out to create a regime of "zero tolerance". With the help of endless document checks and "focused attention" to a certain category of citizens.
According to the stories of the townspeople, the situation has changed and got out of control in 2008, after the crisis, when in Russia for the first time felt an excess of workers. Visiting workers. The construction market froze and in places curled up into a ball, the dismissed guest workers began to absorb utilities. The process went all over the country, and the national composition of the janitors became Central Asian, with rare inclusions of indigenous people. In Kronstadt, the management company "Zhilkomservis" was responsible for cleaning the streets and courtyards, which gave this occupation to outsourcing to a certain cleaning company "Bond". The company was owned by St. Petersburg business-builders, who began to build up excess labor resources in Kronstadt. The housing problems of the visiting workforce of businessmen did not worry at all. New janitors offered to deal with housing on their own. So in Kronstadt, the first "rubber apartments" and the first squats appeared in empty buildings and even at facilities belonging to the Ministry of Defense. Families, as well as kunaks and kunak families, came to the successfully settled countrymen. The Kronstadt people, not alien to the “Soviet friendship of the peoples,” at some point just howled when they found themselves in Kronstadtbad. Especially in a city where everyone knows each other. No wonder sociopsychologists, without knowing it, discovered one of the reasons for modern migrant-phobia. It turns out that the citizens are most strained by the kaleidoscope of new and unfamiliar faces - the psyche is overloaded. And there was traditionally very little work in an isolated, 43-thousand settlement, and local ones, of course, became the weak link. Svetlana, a Kronstadt janitor with 12-year experience, tells us about those times:
- We felt a change in our attitude. Nobody spoke directly, but it was clear, happen that - ten willing will come to your place. We felt some kind of unpleasant pressure. And I can not say that Asians worked better. Just like us, there are good wipers, there are bad ones ...
It seemed that a system successfully operating throughout the country could no longer be rolled back like on a computer, but on July 1 on Twitter, the head of the district Terenty Meshcheryakov appeared on 2013, but at first nobody noticed:
“We replaced janitors at two sites of the FSU Kronstadt. Instead of migrants, Russian citizens are now working. ”
As practice has shown, finding workers for a white salary is very simple.
Broom Order
The administration of the Kronstadt district occupies its building for 130 years, once again confirming the local museenity of life. There is still no megamolls and entertainment centers in Kronstadt, there is no disgustingly modern office building. As Terenty Meshcheryakov says: “From the XIX century we stepped right into the XXI century, and the goal of our development is to preserve the past.” Peter has finally decided what to do with Kronstadt - it will be a city-museum. But it is impossible to combine a preserved European town by miracle and an eastern bazaar. We understand this, so we talk with the chapter about the wipers a little slyly, without national overtones:
- This year Kronstadt turned 310 years. Approximately 305 years Kronstadt streets cleaned Russian citizens, - says the head. - We decided not to interrupt this tradition!
However, Terenty Meshcheryakov quickly translates this pathos with a double meaning into a practical and economic plane:
- One of the problems of Kronstadt is the lack of jobs. Every morning, thousands of people leave for work in St. Petersburg. The second problem - we wanted people working in Kronstadt to spend their money here, in our stores, and not send them to other countries. There was also an economic benefit that we calculated. We are a state organization. Local, working in housing and communal services, pay taxes, we increase payments to the budget. There is also an ethical moment - in our city, people should not live in basements for 30 people. These are ethical norms of our life, and we are obliged to observe them! And how can you demand from the janitor quality work to clean the city, if he lives in such ... conditions? It is very important for us that people working in the housing and communal services do this all the time, for many years.
The chapter tells about staff turnover in housing and public utilities throughout Russia. The usual problem is if the migrant is crooked or forced to share his salary. Nobody appreciates deception, even an illegal migrant. I found a better job, I scrapped all the scoops, shovels from my plot and went to a better life or home to Uzbekistan - who knows? This, by the way, is real Kronstadt profits. To the place we commemorate the criminal background, which is inevitably created by people with a dubious legal and social status:
“I want,” says Terenty, “so that, according to tradition, our janitors could be given administrative and law-enforcement functions.” For example, they would monitor the proper parking in the courtyards, so that the ambulance could pass. So that a person is not just a chalk yard, but also responsible for the house as a whole. That, as old residents told, carried out functions of the patrol and the militiaman on point duty. To impose such duties on a migrant from Central Asia is impossible for a number of reasons ... I, myself, a native of St. Petersburg, grew up with the children of our janitor. We talk a lot about civil society, and the janitor, oddly enough, the most important element in such lower cells.
"Local do not want," or arithmetic scoop and shovels
Of course, as soon as the business of "traders in slave labor" smelled roast, the Kronstadt administration experienced all the charms of the modern information society. First, the messages left by the newly registered users began to appear on city forums: “Kronstadt is overgrown with mud!”, “Return my janitor-Uzbek!”. Some messages were written with fiction, the only fake complainers did not take into account that Kronstadt is a small city, and the Internet is now everywhere, even in some psychiatric clinics. The real “battle of witnesses” has flared up on the Web. Some shouted: “Clean! Do not lie! What house and apartment do you live in? ”But the“ commentators ”did not give up:“ We didn’t see our Russian janitor in the eyes! Laundering money! "
The screaming on the Internet caught up with the press, and then - the prosecutor's office. Prosecutors drove to the addresses indicated in numerous complaints, but found no violations there. The head of this hype reacted philosophically:
“You know, we treated this with understanding — business is business,” smiles Terenty Mescheryakov. - And the company that earned money on this probably didn’t like the fact that they refused its services. Inside utilities, not everyone was delighted with our idea; it did not suit a number of employees. I had to change both the manager and middle managers, for whom working with migrants ... Uh-uh ...
- more interesting! - I find a suitable definition.
- Yes, it is more interesting, - the head nods - Therefore, we will continue to reduce the management in the housing and utilities sector, and spend money on janitors' salaries. By the way, the noise in the press had the opposite result. Everyone learned about the experiment, and we were able to quickly staff the janitors. A woman from the Pskov region saw on TV a story about Kronstadt - they were inviting janitors, providing housing. She came to us.
- Do you give janitors housing?
- Yes, as it always was, we give janitors a room in a hostel. The apartment-type dormitory, and the janitor woman came from Kirov with the children and occupied a whole block - a separate apartment. Now we bought street vacuum cleaners. If the wipers can clean three or four areas with them, we will be happy. Let them earn more, who are against?
The street vacuum cleaner costs, as the unpretentious car. Illegal-janitor nobody will trust him.
Search for understanding
The head of Kronstadt literally kicked us out of his office "into the field." Like, go for a walk along the streets, “see for yourself how we are overgrown with mud”. We walked, talked with the janitors - local and visiting citizens of Russia. They recalled the dismissed foreigners quite kindly, but they all complained to us about the language barrier. It is impossible to work with people without understanding each other. But we did not meet citizens from the CIS on the streets. At all! The administration resettled the abandoned houses, “finding understanding from the police and the military.” “Rubber apartments” were broken up by writing out utility bills to 60 - 80 thousand rubles per month - according to the number of actually living, drawing up the corresponding acts, which were signed by the neighbors. They say they signed it with joy, seeing that the initiator of the resettlement of the “raven settlements” is power itself.
At parting, we went to look at a street vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner really hit the imagination. We all played with him a little in some Kronstadt court. At the same time, the janitors' faces were like children in a water park. One of the leaders of the local housing and communal services even admitted to us that last Saturday he had worked up a whole area with this vacuum cleaner. Not by rank, but ... carried away:
- Sucks everything - cigarette butts, stones. Takes the worst enemy janitor - wet sheet. On one charge works eight hours, then for eight hours in the network.
- How many sites can be removed with such a machine?
- I would clean three - light!
Strangely enough, the vacuum cleaner turned out to be of domestic production, and in a couple of weeks of work it had no breakdowns. I looked at this miracle of technology and tried to understand why under the talk of modernization instead of buying such equipment, and domestic, impure dealers, essentially slave owners, pushed the country into the past century? How did that happen? It is very simple, and this is clearly seen in Kronstadt: while some were engaged in informational cover, voting “Russians don’t want to work,” others silently earned money on slaves. And still others tried to break this vicious circle.
By the way, Terenty Mescheryakov noticed that he was not going to stop at the janitors. He plans to continue to reduce administrative posts in the housing and utilities sector, raising salaries for janitors to such a limit, “until we have a queue of candidates”. The residents themselves will control the cleaning, using an interactive map of Kronstadt, giving their janitors points. And then ... According to the head, he has already talked to representatives of trade, catering and the owners of minibuses. I talked and "found understanding."
BTW
"Gingerbread" for janitors
What should be an employee of Kronstadt utilities.
1. Accommodation in a dormitory-small family (block type) - 1000 rubles per month, plus utilities.
2. Registration in the city of Kronstadt.
3. Employment record, official registration, experience.
4. The average janitor's salary - from 20 thousand rubles (two sites), bonuses.
5. Automation of labor and unlimited production and salary (you can clean five plots with a vacuum cleaner - clean).
6. The social importance of the profession, supported and declared by the authorities of Kronstadt: “The Janitor is the owner of the yard and the house”.
COMPETENT
Nikita Krichevsky, economist, former janitor student: "You can solve this problem in the housing and utilities sector in a month"
- This is still a special case, but I think the process will continue. Those who predict garbage collapse in our cities will be confounded. Unemployment in the Russian regions is high, there is someone to replace migrants. Especially still ten years ago we somehow managed on our own. I know this specifics perfectly - he worked as a janitor. Received 120 rubles plus 55 scholarship - could afford to fly visit a friend in the army. A friend served in Georgia, went to him four times. Renting a one-room apartment on the outskirts of Moscow then cost 50 rubles, so consider ... At the same time, the control over my work was the most severe, and was punished with a ruble. And everything was clean. And there were no vacancies for janitors!
Now migrant janitors are not the result of a shortage of workers, but a product of a corruption system. Solving the problem in housing and communal services is very simple - start mass planting and fining workers in the housing and utilities sector, and I assure you that in a month they will start taking local workers for a normal salary.
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