Foreign Firms Hate Kazakhs
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, there are up to 245 cases of foreign firms discriminating against Kazakhstan citizens.
“Discrimination against Kazakh citizens can be observed both at the stage of signing individual labour contracts and during the entire employment process - while exercising the right to safe working conditions, the right to conclude a collective agreement freely, as well as the rights for rest and payment,” Kushkaliyev said.In all, 127 warrants have been issued by the Prosecutor General and initiated 245 cases. Investigations have been carried out since the beginning of this year. So far 22 licenses have suspended and 5 revoked from foreign companies.
For example, Dongil High Vill Co., a Korean construction company which is building an elite housing complex in Astana, is paying local accountants over $5000 less than foreign colleagues, according to the Prosecutor General. It is true that foreign employees often receive equivalent to levels of their home country. They also often get a stipend for rent and another one to travel home and bring possessions over. However, a $5000 difference is pretty extreme. That more than covers rent of a super-elite apartment and two or three flights home to Korea.
Gazeta.kz also reports that ArcelorMittal Temirtau is ordered to decease age discrimination in hiring people. Apparently, the Human Resources Director of the company said that the company only hires women under 40 years of age and men under 45 years in a media source. Age discrimination is illegal in Kazakhstan, although it is not uncommon for employees to specify age-requirements in job advertisements or for job-wanted classifieds to include personal information like age.
Of course, ArcelorMittal is also under investigation for possibly violating safety regulations after two explosions in two years at their mine in Temirtau. Whether the age-discrimination charge is serious enough for the Prosecutor to follow up on it alone, or whether it is being used to bring pressure on an already besieged company, is unknown. But considering the tragic loss of so many Kazakhstan miners, I have no problem with the government being a bit heavy-handed if there is evidence of violations.
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A few things occur to me:
1) It is very likely true that some, if not all, foreign companies do discriminate against prospective employees. The legislation protecting workers does not seem very strong. Employers ask all kinds of questions of employees that would be the basis of a discrimination suit in the West. This applies to the mention above of only hiring women of a certain age. Women are routinely asked if they are married, if they are planning to have children, because companies want to avoid hiring women that will quit or take leave to have children. Of course, with the previously admirable law on maternity leave gutted this is less of a motivating factor now.
2). Without knowing the specifics it is impossible to judge, but just saying $5000 is a “big difference” is not particularly revealing. How much was that in percentage terms? What were the relative qualifications?
3) Local salaries have gone up quite a lot. However, the demands of qualified local employees have gone up quite faster than I think many companies expected. By now, quite honestly, I’d have expected that expatriates in Kazakhstan would be relegated to the status of owners, investors and possibly top management, as local employees would pick up the slack in all other positions. So far it seems this hasn’t happened; instead, what has happened is that without necessarily increasing their qualifications much, local salary demands have increased on a par with expatriates and kept foreign workers competetive.
Comment by Narcogen — 2 August 2008 @ 7:27 am