Non-festive news on Salesperson Day

On July 29 Ukraine marked National Salesperson Day. But, for some reason, the related ceremony (with greetings from the president and the prime minister) were held at Kyiv Trade and Economics University as early as on July 20. The ceremony was attended by Petro Poroshenko, Minister for Economic Development and Trade. He said a lot of good things about retail trade people in his introductory speech. According to the minister, the trade turnover has risen by 15 percent since the beginning of the year. The sector has topped up the GDP with 228 billion hryvnias in the same period.

But Ukrainians salespeople themselves are not too much yearning for the words of gratitude. What matters more for them is having adequate conditions for work. To tell the truth, they can only hope for this so far. “I have been an entrepreneur for more than 15 years. Conditions have never been worse than at present. Electricity is very expensive today: monopolists are, so to speak, twisting our arms – we pay more than a hryvnia for a kilowatt. Heating rates are also very high. And licenses cost an outrageous price! The license to sell vodka on a small town costs, say, 2,000 hryvnias – as much as in a big city, where there are far more buyers. But these are totally different cases. Just try to earn this amount in a place where 15,000 people live. And how much should this license really cost in a million city? I think at least 10,000. Besides, there is a group of commodities on which we are authorized to place just a 10-precent surcharge. It is bread, sausage, dairy items, cereals, milk, butter, and sour cream. For example, the selling price of bread is three hryvnias, but we sell it at 3.30. Out of these 30 kopecks, I have to pay 7,000 hryvnias a month for electricity. How much bread should I sell to be able to do so? And I pay 4,000 hryvnias for the heating of a small shop. We can’t take it any more! We are barely surviving. I am saying to my employees: let us be patient a little more. Maybe, the government will at last pay attention to us. It is very difficult to for us to work,” Halyna Gorbachova from Pyriatyn told The Day.

But it is not only small-scale entrepreneurs who suffer. Speaking to trade union leaders, The Day came across another very acute problem of the national retail trade sector. It is, in particular, about the work of multinational trade chains’ branches in Ukraine. It turns out that they are not exactly rushing to obey the Ukrainian labor law. For example, answering a Day’s question, Oleksandr Mishchenko, chairman of the Labor Alliance [trade union of those employed in retail trade, public catering and services. – Ed.], noted: “Today, foreign companies are not just disrespecting the Ukrainian staff – in my view, they do not consider the Ukrainians as human beings at all. We have to struggle against things like this. Judge for yourself: we have sent letters of complaint to the prosecution service against Auchan and Metro, the biggest companies on the Ukrainian market, and their managers. They do not comply with the provisions of our labor law. But the Ukrainian governmental bodies do not react to our signals – they are ready to forgive them anything in order to attract investments to this country and prefer to leave them alone. But these companies are in fact offshore zones on our territory. What is more, the injury rate in them is one of the highest in this sector. For example, in Auchan it is higher than in the mining industry. This is not normal. Surprisingly, we fail to receive support from the state. We are now trying to change the situation in some way with the help of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and check the negative facts established by the court…”

Unfortunately, The Day failed to check the information about injuries in the retail chains. The State Inspectorate for Mining and Industrial Safety does not have this information, although they are supposed to take into account what relates to the socio-cultural sphere, to which retail trade also belongs. Artem Boryshpolets, head of this service’s socio-cultural department responsible for Kyiv city and oblast, also failed to tell The Day any concrete data. “Of course, this may or may not have happened. I have no statistics, but the injury rate in all the spheres, where it is usually not very high, sharply increases in the period of icy roads.”