MOSCOW, Jan 12: Striking teachers in northern Russia have taken hostage the head of the local administration, his deputy and the school head and threatened to throw them out of the window, NTV television said on Tuesday.The incident at Vologda, 400 kilometres (250 miles) North of Moscow is the latest in a series of protests all over Russia over unpaid wages.Some 12,000 employees of 443 schools and kindergartens in the Vologda region went on strike on December 15. A hundred teachers and parents blocked the railway line to Saint Petersburg.ITAR-TASS news agency meanwhile reported teachers at more than 150 schools at Irkutsk, Siberia, had refused to resume work after the end of year holidays because of wage arrears totalling 300 million rubles (13 million dollars).Teachers' salaries, which are in any case very low, ranging from 300 to 800 rubles a month, sometimes go unpaid for months because of the economic and Financial crisis facing Russia.At the beginning of December a teacher atUlianovsk, Lenin's birthplace in the Volga region, died after going on a protest hunger strike.
