[FPSPACE] ISS Flight Control engineers unhappy with low wages

[Jim Oberg]

      ISS Flight Control engineers unhappy with low wages
                  18:46 | 27/ 02/ 2006




MOSCOW, February 27 (RIA Novosti, Alexander Kovalev) - Specialists at 
Russia's Mission Control responsible for the technical support of the 
International Space Station (ISS) are unhappy with their low wages, a 
Mission Control official said Monday.

"Wages at Mission Control have not been raised for the past two years. We 
have people who have to live on 3,000 rubles [just over $100] a month. This 
is humiliating. As a person responsible for ballistic analysis of the most 
complex space operations who has been working here since 1977, i.e., for 
nearly 30 years, I make less than 10,000 rubles [$354] a month," Alexander 
Kireev, chief of the Mission Control Ballistic Service Coordination Group, 
said.

"Sooner or later, this will affect the overall quality of our work," he 
said.