Hundreds of lawyers in Perm region in western Siberia went on strike on Friday to protest their meager salaries of 300 rubles ($10) a day, local media reported.
The sum in question is the minimum wage for working on a criminal case, a job the lawyers are obliged to do by law. The payment was unchanged since 2008 despite governmental orders to at least adjust it for inflation, the lawyers said in a statement cited by Properm.ru.
“The average bill in a court cafeteria is 150 rubles. There’s a limit to human patience, and it’s passed,” lawyer Pavel Yakovlev told Fedpress.ru.
All 975 practicing lawyers in Perm region joined the one-day strike, Yakovlev said. A further 600 lawyers supported the protest in the republic of Udmurtia in the Urals, as did an unspecified number of their colleagues in the far eastern Primorye region.
