28
around 1995 on, they began to have staff with professional qualifications and have worked
effectively.
46
Yet, despite some of these changes, perhaps due to the fact that most of the positions
within the social welfare system are administrative in nature, the majority of people work with a
rational, Weberian concept of bureaucracy (“administrators do not make policy decisions or have
conflicts of interest”) that has existed within the social welfare bureaucracy for a few decades.
47
Moreover, social welfare experts in Poland attribute the lack of corruption within the distribution
of social welfare benefits to the fact that the money for each benefit is relatively small and that
people who work in the area of social welfare are generally honest—which may be a
characteristic of those who choose to work in this field in any country.
48
Finally, in neither
Poland or Russia have political parties been used as tools to unify, organize or direct the social
welfare bureaucrats.
Personnel Resources in Russia’s Social Welfare Administration
When the Russian Federation Employment Service was founded in 1991, part of the staff
often came from the departments of labor development within the local government
administrations while other employees came from state enterprises.
49
In recent years, the low
salaries of the workers were said to have led to a poorly qualified personnel and to the high
turnover of cadre, who leave once they’ve acquired some work experience.
50
When the
Employment Fund was dissolved in 2001, many good specialists quit and others lost their
46
Meeting with Anna Wiśniewska-Mucha, Director, Ośrodek Pomocy Społecznej Dzielnicy Żoliborż w Gminie
Warszawa-Centrum (Social Assistance Center in Żoliborż district of Warsaw-Center), Warsaw, December 11, 2001.
47
Meeting with Frieske, October 29, 2001.
48
Meeting with Każmierczak, September 19, 2001; Meeting with Stanisława Golinowska, Professor of Economics,
Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw, November 3, 2001; and Meeting with Falski, June 30,
2004.
49
Meeting with Valerii A. Pirozhkov, Director of State Establishment “Volograd City Center of Employment of the
Population,” Volgograd, August 22, 2003.
50
Meeting with Employment Office Head, Moscow Oblast, August 27, 2003.
Convention