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- On the side of truth: the court helped the teacher to achieve recalculation of salary
On the side of truth: the court helped the teacher to achieve recalculation of salary
An elementary school teacher from the Khabarovsk lyceum obtained a recalculation of her salary through the court. She will receive more than 150,000 rubles, as she received much less than the minimum wage for one 18-hour rate. The court proceedings in this case are continuing: the plaintiff's side believes that justice has not been fully served. However, this case can already help those teachers whose salary per rate is below the minimum wage level — and there are a lot of them all over the country. Teachers have already started contacting lawyers to seek the truth in court with similar demands. For more information, see the Izvestia article.
What should be a teacher's salary: what is the essence of the trial
Izvestia was told about the court case by the Teacher trade union. At the end of August, the Khabarovsk Regional Court overturned the April decision of the lower Khabarovsk Railway Court in the case of the payment of unpaid wages to the teacher of the Zvezdny Lyceum.
Ekaterina Agoshina has been working at the lyceum since August 2022. With a training load of 26 hours per week, she was paid 8.2 thousand rubles. By January 1, 2025, her salary increased to 11.5 thousand rubles. However, according to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, this part of the teacher's salary per 18-hour rate should have been at least equal to the federal minimum wage, which in 2025 is 22.4 thousand rubles.
These requirements were not taken into account. As a result, the elementary school teacher, who is also a mother of many children, along with all the allowances, incentive payments, etc., received less than 40 thousand rubles with an average regional salary of almost 90 thousand rubles.
The lawsuit also states that a number of other allowances and payments were not taken into account or incorrectly calculated in Ekaterina Agoshina's salary. For example, regional coefficients (Far Eastern and for work in difficult climatic conditions) had to be added to the minimum wage.
The defense demanded to collect wage arrears for the period from September 1, 2022 to March 6, 2025 in the amount of more than 598 thousand rubles, as well as compensation for delayed payments in the amount of 264.7 thousand rubles and compensation for moral damage in the amount of 400 thousand rubles.
The first judicial instance, the Khabarovsk Railway Court, refused to satisfy the claims. The Khabarovsk Regional Court partially agreed with the appeal and reviewed the decision.
— We were sure that the court would review the decision of the first instance. Resolution No. 40 is on our side.-Resolution of the Constitutional Court of September 23, 2024," said Oleg Samsonov, a private practice lawyer who led the case at the request of the Teacher trade union.
We are talking about the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, which, considering the case of another teacher, confirmed that the teacher's salary cannot be lower than the minimum wage. After the adoption of this resolution, amendments were also made to the Unified Recommendations on the Establishment at the federal, regional and local levels of remuneration systems for employees of state and municipal institutions for 2025, approved by the Russian Tripartite Commission for the Regulation of Social and Labor Relations, Alexey Tishchenko, a leading researcher at the Central Research Institute of the Institute of Economic and Social Sciences of the Presidential Academy, told Izvestia.
These documents clearly state that the salary should not only be at least the minimum wage, but also the district coefficient and the percentage premium for work in the Far North and equivalent areas should be taken into account.: they are credited to all types of payments included in the payroll system.
However, as a recent study showed, even the minimum wage requirement is not met in 90% of regions.
The decision of the Khabarovsk Regional Court, however, did not fully satisfy the defense either: the court demanded that the lyceum reimburse the debt from November 2023 to March 2025 in the amount of only 117.5 thousand rubles, as well as compensation for delayed payments in the amount of about 29 thousand rubles and compensation for moral damage in 10 thousand rubles. The court found that Ekaterina Agoshina could no longer claim her salary until November 2023, as she had applied to the court in November 2024.
— The court pointed to Article 392 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, which states that after dismissal, an employee has the right to file a claim for unpaid wages only within a year. But in our case, the employee continues to work, so article 395 applies, which states that if the wage violation continues in relation to the current employee, then there is no statute of limitations," Oleg Samsonov believes.
In addition, the court considered that the salary should be increased only to 22,440 rubles. However, the defense team emphasizes that this is the salary for only 18 hours. Neither the district allowances nor the load over one rate are taken into account. Taking into account all the allowances, correctly calculated incentive payments, increased salary, etc. Ekaterina's full salary in January 2025 was supposed to amount to 81 thousand rubles instead of the 39 thousand paid to her.
What is the situation of the other teachers in Khabarovsk
Another requirement that the lawyer will go to the courts of the next instance is a change in the city administration's salary resolution No. 4860 dated 12/21/2021. According to it, Ekaterina Agoshina — and, apparently, the rest of the city's teachers — were paid a reduced salary. Oleg Samsonov emphasizes that this document does not take into account either the ruling of the Constitutional Court, the industry agreement, or the unified recommendations, although all of them are higher in importance.
— There are a lot of difficulties in paying teachers, it is very difficult to understand all the subtleties. The problem is that accountants don't know on what basis they should make payments — they do as their superiors said," says Oleg Samsonov.
At the trial, the accountant of the MCU "Centralized Accounting of Educational Institutions" confirmed (the audio recording is available to Izvestia) that the accruals are carried out according to the regulations on remuneration of the Khabarovsk administration. The decision of the Constitutional Court is not taken into account. The representative of the Department of Education also admitted that the city does not comply with this decree.
Tatiana Levitskaya, the chairman of the Khabarovsk City Organization of the Trade Union of Workers of Public Education and Science, who was invited by the defense, said at the trial that so far there had not been a single school in the region that had not complied with the ruling of the Constitutional Court. Oleg Samsonov adds that Levitskaya is the director of another Khabarovsk school, which means that at least two schools definitely do not meet the requirements of the law.
Izvestia requested a position on the situation from the All-Russian Trade Union of Workers of Public Education and Science, and also sent a request to the Khabarovsk Department of Education and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Khabarovsk Territory.
Alexey Mokrushin, Minister of Education and Science of the Khabarovsk Territory, replied that the industry's remuneration system for employees complies with Uniform Recommendations. However, we note that in Khabarovsk, judging by the Agoshina case, they use not a regional decree, but a city one. The official stressed that the ministry is not a party to the case, but understands that "everyone has the right to protect their labor rights." The Khabarovsk Department of Education did not respond to a request.
How will the case affect the salaries of other teachers
Oleg Samsonov expects that after this court decision, the number of appeals to the court about unpaid wages will increase significantly. He has already received a similar request from another teacher.
— We plan to use the same scheme to seek salary recalculations for other teachers. Let's start with the members of our trade union," confirmed Mikhail Kurbanov, a member of the regional branch of the Teacher trade union. — For now, we are collecting all the necessary documents from teachers, we will attach to them a reasoned court decision, a resolution of the Constitutional Court and we will achieve recalculations.
Irina Abankina, a professor at the HSE Institute of Education, agrees that the decision in the case will allow other teachers to seek recalculations.
However, not everywhere you have to go to court. In other regions, the prosecutor's office mainly works with teachers' salaries, Oleg Samsonov explains.
— But in the Khabarovsk Territory, the supervisory authority refused to enter into the case either at our request or at the request of State Duma deputy Alexei Kornienko. They were motivated by the fact that this teacher is already suing, but the prosecutor's office did not check on other teachers independently," the lawyer explained.
Izvestia sent a request to the regional prosecutor's office.
The Uchitel trade union stressed that 12 regional prosecutor's offices had taken real measures to pay unpaid salaries, and in many regions they had taken the path of unsubscribing. The trade union intends to send an appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office in the coming days in connection with the inaction of a number of regional prosecutor's offices.
It happens that you do not have to contact the prosecutor's office, the issue is resolved at the level of a complaint to the school management. This happened in Udmurtia, where Anna Sternberg, a member of the Council of the Confederation of Labor of Russia from the Teacher trade union, achieved a recalculation of wages for herself and one of the teachers of vocational education from Izhevsk simply by contacting the management of educational institutions. In the summer, they were paid their due supplement to the minimum wage.
"The other teachers seem to have problems because they are silent," she told Izvestia. However, the accounting department assured me that they would be looking for money in order to pay everyone the missing funds. I can't be the only one getting a different salary from the others.
Another violation faced by teachers is the refusal to take into account overwork in excess of one rate. In the situation with the Khabarovsk Regional Court, the full workload in the teacher's salary was also not taken into account: with 26 hours of real work, Agoshina was required to pay the funds as if she worked only for one rate at 18 hours. However, hours over the rate should also be paid in proportion to the minimum wage, Oleg Samsonov believes.
The situation is typical. In one of the regions (the teachers who shared this example were afraid to disclose details), the same thing is happening: teachers with different workloads (21 and 25 hours) receive the same salary, equal to the minimum wage. And although the teachers were able to prove that the two rates needed to be paid accordingly, they were told that there was "no money" for recalculation and offered to go to court.
Irina Abankina notes that limited resources for salary payments push administrators to various "tricks". She calls the registration of teachers for a share of the rate and the non-inclusion of additional hours in the teacher's classroom workload the main way. This is partly what happened in the case of Ekaterina Agoshina: they tried to "hide" her extra hours in addition to one payment rate in another line.
Alexey Tishchenko, a leading researcher at the Central Research Institute of the IPEI Presidential Academy, noted that the ruling of the Constitutional Court and uniform recommendations should be taken into account by authorities at all levels when budgeting, therefore, there should be no problems with funds for the remuneration of teaching staff.
However, he notes that so far many teachers are not ready to sue the school administration, as they are afraid to face pressure from the leadership. As the story of Ekaterina Agoshina shows, you can protect your rights in any situation. Mikhail Kurbanov says that the primary school teacher had already had difficulties with the school's management even before the salary litigation: she even had to challenge the unlawfully imposed penalty on her. But an illegally small salary is not a consequence of difficulties in relations with management. All teachers have such problems, and anyone can challenge them: first by contacting the management, then to the supervisory authorities and to the court.
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