Members of the government Council Natalia Pochinok and Elena Topoleva-Soldunova proposed identifying homeless people with the help of the police and then sending them to work.
For this purpose, a draft regulating the interaction between state authorities and regional organizations was developed. In addition to police officers and social organizations, homeless people can be identified by individuals and legal entities and reported to the appropriate authorities. A police and ambulance squad must appear on call. Then the homeless person undergoes fingerprinting and identification procedures. If a citizen has no offenses, information about him is transferred to the Center for Social Adaptation.
Then the distribution takes place. Women are sent to crisis centers. Men who are able to work – in “social and labor homes", deprived of the possibility of self–service - in the Center of Social Adaptation. Moreover, a homeless person has the right to refuse help.
The Ministry of Labor rejected the proposal of the members of the Government Council, since the employment of citizens is a private voluntary matter and is regulated by the norms of the Labor Code.
According to the population census for 2021, 11,285 homeless people were identified in Russia.
Laws providing for forced labor are being developed at the level of the Government Council. Forced labor is prohibited by the current labor legislation. However, the current Labor Code may be too liberal, which creates obstacles for the state to “take care” of citizens who find themselves in a difficult life situation. The result of the removal of contradictions between such bills and the Labor Code may be the resolution of forced labor, with its subsequent application and extension to other categories of citizens.
It is possible to forcibly use the labor force of homeless people as socially vulnerable segments of the population, for example, in conditions of harmful and dangerous industries, in low-skilled jobs.
If the goal is to help the homeless, then how will the involvement of police and ambulance squads with subsequent fingerprinting and identification procedures and distribution to dubious institutions help to accomplish such a task?
Thus, the class of employers has made another attempt to step on the rights of workers, using the institution of the state. The working class, which has gained personal freedom as a result of bourgeois revolutions, may lose it. To prevent this, it is necessary to wage a class struggle for political power. To do this, the workers need to work on creating a party based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
Source: Solidarity – "They want to send homeless people to work" dated July 11th, 2023.