The experts of the Trade Union Council checked the state of compliance with labour legislation, accounting and payment for hours worked in the locomotive facilities of Ukrzaliznytsia. To do this, they analysed statistical data for 5 months of 2024 and carried out spot checks of primary payroll documents.

Staffing levels in the locomotive department are 90% complete. And employees continue to leave. For example, 173 drivers resigned in five months, while only two were hired.

OVERTIME WORK. On average, due to staff shortages, almost 7.7 thousand people in the farm worked overtime for 24 hours each month. In five months, this amounted to 120 hours. In peacetime, this is the annual limit, beyond which it is forbidden to work.

The situation is similar with work on weekends: in 5 months of 2024, the farm worked 61.6 thousand hours, with an average of 556 people working 22 hours per month on a weekend.

LUNCH BREAK. In some depots, in violation of Article 66 of the Labour Code, employees who cannot leave their workplace and use the break time at their own discretion still have a lunch break, which is not recorded as working time. As a result, depending on the accounting period, employees were not paid 14-15 hours of overtime per month or 20-34 hours per quarter.

The actual amount of bonuses in the farm does not depend on the level of performance against the bonus targets and is limited to 15%. Even taking into account the increased bonus amount for acutely shortage professions, the average bonus amount based on the results of work during the first five months of 2024 was 17.2%.

Despite numerous requests from the trade union, the administration refuses to include locomotive crews in the list of acutely shortage occupations, although the situation with staffing is extremely negative.

Bonuses for the most shortage professions. One of the indicators of such bonuses, ‘Not exceeding the depot percentage of faulty locomotives’, which ‘adds’ 20% to the bonus, is almost never met in any depot. The trade union believes that it would be appropriate to reduce its nominal size to 10% and divide it into two indicators by type of traction (diesel and electric locomotives) with a nominal size of 5% each. The respective proposals were worked out by members of the professional section of the Union Council and sent to the departments of remuneration and staff motivation and locomotive facilities.

OTHER PAYMENTS: The trade union insists on expanding the application of the premium for high professional skills and additional payments for performing duties of temporarily absent employees alongside their main job.

In addition, the locomotive services of certain regional branches, while meeting all the conditions for setting the allowance for the award of the title of ‘1st Class Master’ or ‘2nd Class Master’ to foremen, do not approve the entire list of employees submitted for approval, which is unacceptable.

It has also been established that in some regional branches, the additional payment to employees for performing the duties of temporarily absent employees alongside their main job is limited to no more than 50% of their official salary (tariff rate). But in fact, 20-40% is charged, even in depots where the minimum amount of this supplement is 50%, as set out in the collective agreement.

The results of the inspections were reviewed by the Presidium of the Trade Union Council. Specific recommendations were given to the Locomotive Department of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia to eliminate the identified violations. The department has already responded to some of them.

In particular, in order to streamline the issue of remuneration of locomotive drivers working in service areas over 500 km, the gradation of hourly wage rates was expanded and a corresponding decision was made in clause 2.5.9 of the Regulations on Remuneration of Employees of ‘Ukrzaliznytsia’.

At the trade union’s insistence, the issue of rewarding locomotive crews for working in difficult weather conditions was resolved.