Today, February 11, the director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Kochetov spoke about the salaries at the institute, how much he himself receives and whether employees are forced to part-time.
Last week, his employee Anastasia Proskurina at a meeting of the presidential Council for Science and Education told Vladimir Putin about the low wages of scientists. Yesterday it became known that Proskurina’s team received an award of 5 million rubles.
The editorial office received a large letter explaining the salaries at the institute from Alexey Kochetov. We publish the most basic.
Aleksey Vladimirovich Kochetov — Director of ICG SB RAS, Corresponding Member of RAS, Professor of RAS, Doctor of Biological Sciences. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals «Vavilovsky Journal of Genetics and Breeding» and Plant Gene (Elsevier). Awarded the Prize of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for young scientists named after Academician D.K.Belyaev.
The director of the ICG SB RAS named his salary after the scandal with his employee.
Why do researchers receive little?
The salary of a researcher at the ICG SB RAS consists of the following parts:
- Fixed salary , the same for all researchers of the same category. For example, the salary of senior research workers of candidates of sciences is 24 347 rubles.
- The incentive fund was formed from funds for the implementation of the May decrees. It was divided into 2 parts: incentive payment of 6,000 rubles per one researcher — it is issued by the decision of the head of the structural unit; the second part is paid on the basis of scientific performance indicators (RIP) in the form of an annual bonus , usually in January-February. This award takes into account the number and quality of scientific publications.
- Payments from grants, contracts for research work (R&D), targeted subsidies, which are not included in the state assignment of the institute. The main feature of these payments is that they are determined not by the management of the institute, but by the project manager. A tripartite agreement is concluded with the foundations (institute — foundation — project manager), the institute gives a place to work, the head forms a temporary work collective, determines the cost estimate and the amount of personal payments.
Researchers’ salaries are very different depending on the success in obtaining grants and fulfilling research and development contracts; each grant holder and project manager himself sets the amount of payments.
The Institute does not consider it right to interfere in this process at the level of an individual researcher and ensures the payment of a fixed salary, then everything depends on the effectiveness of scientific work .
Average salaries of researchers in 2020
Researchers (all) — 67,214.5 rubles. per month.
Including:
- chief, leading and senior researchers — 86,530.5 rubles. per month;
- research workers, junior research workers — 53 703.6 rubles. per month.
The average salary in the region in the NSO in 2020 is 35,010 rubles, double the average, respectively, 70,020 rubles.
It should be noted that payments to researchers of the ICG SB RAS under grants from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (in total in 2020 — 82 million rubles) are not taken into account when calculating the average salary, notes Kochetov.
Thus, as noted by the Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov, according to the criterion of the average salary of research workers, the institute fulfills the reporting criteria. But this implementation is achieved largely through grants, says Kochetov’s letter.
Today the NGS has already said that the Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia Valery Falkov said that he calculated how much an employee of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the SB RAS earns, who complained about the low salary to the president .
— The average monthly salary of Anastasia Sergeevna last year amounted to 44,129 rubles, including, as she rightly pointed out, 25,000 is the official salary. If we compare with 2019, then in 2019 Anastasia Sergeevna had a little more due to the fact that there was a grant from the RFBR — it was 57,375 rubles. So 2020 in this sense was somewhat different from the previous one, since there were no other payments, » the Kremlin website quoted Valery Falkov, Minister of Science and Higher Education of Russia.
Why is not all salaries paid from the state order?
The state assignment of the ICG SB RAS for 2020: 512 million rubles, the salary fund of only researchers from the state assignment in the parent organization is 200 million rubles. The total number of employees in the parent organization is more than 900 people.
It is difficult to allocate more funds for salaries from the state order, since the maintenance of infrastructure requires significant expenses (on the balance sheet of the institute — the SPF-vivarium, the Center for Collective Use of Fur and Farm Animals (an experiment on fox domestication), a greenhouse complex, a conventional vivarium, a number of TsKP), utilities.
At the same time, in 2020, the institute is implementing 41 projects of the Russian Science Foundation (177 million) and 125 projects of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (for 113 million).
Are the organizations transferring part-time employees to formally fulfill the May decrees?
Earlier, the chairman of the trade union of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lyudmila Levchenko, told the NGS correspondent that the institutes can transfer employees part-time for the sake of executing a decree on increasing salaries.
— The decree, which was signed by the president in 2012, just assumed that the salaries of researchers would rise to 200% of the average for the region. But the second decree, which involved additional funding for the implementation of the first, was never implemented. The institutes themselves, as best they can, solved this problem. In this regard, those institutes that had some additional extra-budgetary funds raised the salaries of researchers and, as they could, tried to fulfill the decree. Some of the institutes that did not have any additional extrabudgetary funds were left as they are. They transferred employees to 0.5 rates with the same salary that he had on a rate. As a result, the rate was completely doubled, — Lyudmila Levchenko told about the problem.
Kochetov refutes the information that such a practice exists in his institute. He will be assured that no one was transferred by order «from above» to a part of the rate at the institute. Part-time work can be, for example, due to parental leave, for people over 65, as well as with working conditions due to a pandemic. All such transfers were made only at the request of the employee.
How is the salary of an institute director determined?
Director’s salary — 69,725 rubles. The rest is determined by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and is written out in the form of prizes. The director himself has no right to write anything into his salary. In 2020, Kochetov, with the permission of the Ministry of Education and Science, participated in the implementation of two grants from the Russian Science Foundation, which also contributed to the salary.
Why do some members of the Directorate have large incomes in their declarations, is it not connected with the incorrect distribution of the state order?
The declaration includes not only the salary, but also other incomes of the person (work in other organizations, for example). The salary from the state order ICG is not separately allocated in it. On average, to my great regret, the administrative and managerial staff at the ICG receives less than in other research institutes and universities. Competition for good talent between organizations is great.
Yesterday it became known that the prize of five million rubles was received by a team of scientists from the Novosibirsk Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of whose employees, Anastasia Proskurina, recently complained to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the low salaries of scientists.
