To avoid layoffs, employees will be transferred to subsidiaries, sources say
Roscosmos is considering the possibility of reducing the staff of the central office from 600 to 300 people, sources told Izvestia. This is due to the difficulties of forming a wage fund. However, the reduction will be more formal: employees will be transferred to subordinate organizations — there they will be registered and receive a salary, and they will continue to work in the central office of Roscosmos, performing the same functions as before, our interlocutors explained. Experts believe that as a result, employees may lose bonuses and part of social benefits. Roscosmos stated that it "pays great attention to optimizing the costs and the number of the central office," but no decisions have been made on this issue yet.
Double reduction
About half of the employees of the central office of the Roscosmos state Corporation — 300 out of 600 employees - may be cut, according to a source of Izvestia, who previously worked at Roscosmos and is familiar with the situation. According to him, people can be transferred to the United Rocket and Space Corporation (ORCC) and other subsidiaries. Thus, the organization — at least on paper — will significantly reduce personnel costs.
— Expenses through the payroll account for a significant share of the expenses of the central office, and the fund itself is not infinite, — said the source. — It is very easy to explain this: the launch services market is closed to us, we have never been able to boast of satellite construction, we no longer carry American tourists for money, and we cannot find others in the current situation. That is, all areas of earning currency for Roscosmos are closed, and the domestic market for space services is not developed and is tied to state contracts. Therefore, the personnel department has been tasked to reduce the state corporation's staff by the end of the year. The most obvious solution is to transfer employees to the ORCC.
Photo: RIA Novosti/Roman Sokolov
Image source: iz.ru
Information about the likely reduction was confirmed to Izvestia by two more sources — an employee of the state corporation and an employee of the ORKK.
The United Rocket and Space Corporation was established in 2014 on the basis of the Research Institute of Space Instrumentation. In December 2016, 100% of its shares were transferred to the state corporation Roscosmos. According to the source of Izvestia, now the ORCC performs only one function — the holder of shares of industry enterprises of the state corporation.
— It is impossible to pay salaries from the dividends of enterprises, because one of their recipients is the state, — explained a source who previously worked at Roscosmos. — If we take this step, it turns out that such a scheme is a deception of the state. Instead, the corporation will work according to the following scheme: ORKK and other special enterprises will be given new orders by Roscosmos, and the salaries of employees will be included in their price. Employees of the department from some department of Roscosmos "on paper" will be transferred to work in this enterprise. And physically they will continue to be in Roscosmos and perform their duties. However, they will be registered in another company and receive money from its wage fund.
According to the same source, such a practice of employing Roscosmos employees existed in the Federal Space Agency (reformed into Roscosmos in 2015) and in the first years of the state corporation's work, when its staff was 150 people, people got a job at the Center for the Operation of Ground-based Space Infrastructure Facilities (CENKI) and other subsidiaries, but performed work as employees of Roscosmos.
Photo: RIA Novosti/Alexander Kovalev
Image source: iz.ru
— This practice was called "snowdrops" — a literary modification of the word "adjacent", since the employees were listed in related organizations, — the source explained. — It is very interesting that Alexander Ivanov, the current deputy head of the state corporation Yuri Borisov, worked at Roscosmos at that time. It was he who oversaw this direction at the time. The scheme is quite tricky — to prove its existence, you need not only to know about it, but also to collect information that an employee, for example, did not go to work at a particular enterprise, did not perform his official duties. But all this can be circumvented.
Izvestia sent a request to Roscosmos with a request to inform whether it is planned to reduce the staff of the central office of the state corporation and transfer people to subsidiaries.
"None of the decisions described in the request has been made by the management of the State Corporation," the response received by the editorial board says. "The management of Roscosmos pays great attention to optimizing the costs and the number of the central office, this is one of the strategic tasks that Yuri Borisov set for the team."
Let's be legal
The scheme described by the sources of Izvestia may well be implemented within the framework of existing laws — for this you need to properly formalize the relationship between employees and the employer, believes Marina Astayeva, a member of the Association of Lawyers of Russia.
Photo: RIA Novosti/Roscosmos
Image source: iz.ru
— The Labor Code of the Russian Federation prohibits borrowed labor. That is, employees cannot work in one company but perform work in the interests of another. This is possible only in certain cases, for example, if the organizations are affiliated. Otherwise, this fact can be recognized as a violation. However, the documents can be arranged in such a way that one organization (represented by its employees) provides services to another organization under a GPH contract. In this case, it will be considered that the contractor's employees provide a service to another company while working for their employer," the lawyer noted.
The fact that people will continue to work in the central office is also not something criminal, Marina Astayeva believes.
— For example, the "daughter" can rent this room for its employees, or get it in another legal way. In this case, the fact that the employees are in the office of the state corporation and work for a subsidiary will not be a violation," the specialist explained.
A fourth source, who previously also worked at Roscosmos, added that the state corporation is still working on this principle. In particular, Roscosmos Media employs employees of the press service of the state corporation's TV studio, RK-Accounting has financiers, the Zvezdny Center has service personnel, and RK-Digit has IT specialists. And all of the above categories of employees sit in the same building — the office of the state corporation.
Photo: RIA Novosti
Image source: iz.ru
— In my opinion, it is economists, accountants and lawyers who are waiting for cuts and transfers — this is just about half of the staff of Roscosmos, — said the fourth source.
The mass application of the employee transfer scheme to subsidiaries may lead to the implementation of other schemes, and there have already been such precedents with space industry enterprises.
— Employees of the Russian Space Systems (RCS) many years ago, while at their workplaces, were simultaneously listed and allegedly performed work in contracting organizations. On the one hand, it allowed them to pay a decent salary and they did not run away in difficult times for the company, and on the other hand, it was fraud proven by the court, the perpetrators were punished," the source said.
In 2007-2010, RCS distributed work orders under the Federal Target Program GLONASS under contracts between subsidiaries of NPO KP and Sinertek. During the specified period, at least 3.2 billion rubles were transferred to the accounts of these companies. The reports of the NGO KP and Synertek indicate that up to 1.1 thousand people worked in these firms every month. At the same time, according to the Roscosmos commission, most of the employees of these organizations were employed by the RCS.
— Removing employees from the staff will allow Roscosmos to save a lot on bonuses, — added the fourth source. — Quarterly and annual bonuses are equal to salary. If people are officially registered in other organizations, they will no longer be paid bonuses, which will save about a third of the payroll.
Also, according to him, employees of the Roscosmos office have access to VMI with very high-quality services, which is considered an important bonus, which they are also likely to lose.
The transfer of an employee to another employer is possible only with the consent of the employee, Oleg Zherdev, a lawyer, founder of the Russian association of lawyers of law enforcement agencies "Guardia", recalled in an interview with Izvestia.
— However, employees may be faced with a choice: either agree to transfer to subsidiaries, or quit due to staff reduction, — the lawyer believes.
According to Oleg Zherdev, the scheme announced by the sources of Izvestia may be an optimization of expenses for employees of the central office, "which is clearly overblown in Roscosmos."
Photo: Roscosmos Media/Natalia Berezhnaya
Image source: iz.ru
The personnel policy of Roscosmos comes into the spotlight for the second time in recent days. Earlier, Izvestia wrote about the possibility of a reshuffle in the top management of the state corporation in connection with the death of the Luna-25 automatic station. The emergency happened on August 19 — during the transition from the circular circumlunar to the pre-landing orbit, the spacecraft fell on the satellite from a height of about 100 km due to abnormal engines that worked and crashed.
Sources of Izvestia did not rule out that the failure of the mission could lead to the resignation of the first Deputy Director General of Roscosmos, Alexander Ivanov (he, as the head of the state commission for the launch of Luna-25, put the last signature in the final protocol on readiness) and Deputy Director General for Space complexes and systems Mikhail Khailov.
Olga Kolentsova