Two Russian politicians are defending their complaints about long working hours in Russia’s State Duma.
Communist Party deputies Vera Ganzya and Tamara Pletneva stopped work in the Russian parliament on Wednesday night and asked for State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin to end the session.
The women said that the long hours were damaging politicians’ health.
Pletneva also complained that female deputies were still expected to “go home and feed their husbands.”
Read more: A third of workers on minimum-wage are state employees, politician reveals.
In an interview with Novosibirsk’s Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Ganzya said that many Duma deputies were dissatisfied.
“In the past, we’ve considered putting a maximum of 60 bills on each agenda. Now there are 140,” she said. “I always try to delve into the bills and ask questions, but it is just impossible with these numbers.”
Ganzya said that she would often finished work at 10 p.m. without time to eat lunch or dinner.
“If you want an employee to do a good job, you need to create a good-quality working environment,” she said.
“You should have seen the deputies at the end of the working day, with red, watery eyes. At the end of the day, we can barely understand what’s in front of us.”
Under government regulations, Duma deputies should not work later than 8. p.m. Politicians’ monthly salaries are currently 420,000 rubles ($6,665) per month, with lawmakers entitled to additional bonuses. The average monthly salary in Russia stood at 32,176 rubles ($510) in mid-2015.
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