Late last week, the Romanian Labour Minister Dragos
\nPaslaru announced that a new emergency ordinance on salaries in the public
\nsector, drafted together with the main stakeholders, might be ready by May 15th.
\nThe draft will be under public debate for two weeks, and the Executive might
\npass it on June 1st. This is actually the deadline, as according to
\nthe law, an emergency ordinance can only be adopted within six months before
\nthe start of general elections. The labour minister said the goal of the
\nordinance would be to adjust the base salary in the public sector. The
\ngovernment wants to obtain stakeholders’ approval, given that budget resources
\nare limited and only the lowest salaries will be increased. Under the new
\nordinance, some 300,000 to 500,000 state employees might benefit from a salary
\nincrease. <\/p>\n
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In another move, the Government spokesman Dan Suciu
\nhas stated that the passing of the ordinance very much depends on whether the
\ndocument is accepted by stakeholders and, if they find more flaws than
\nbenefits, the ordinance will not go through. Trade union federation leaders
\nhave already announced that they are unhappy with the new bill and have warned
\nthat inequalities will not disappear, but only move a little upwards from the
\nbottom of the salary grid. For such salary increases the government has 2
\nbillion lei available, which is too small an amount according to trade unions,
\nwhich have announced they might stage protest meetings. Marius Sepi, the
\nfirst-vice-president of Sanitas trade union federation, believes that an
\napproach by ‘bits’ is not acceptable, as only some people would benefit from
\nsuch corrections. He said financing solutions must be found for this ordinance
\nto cover all types of employees. <\/p>\n
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A new meeting of the National Three-Party Council was
\nheld on Friday at the Government, with government, employers’ associations and
\ntrade unions discussing the principles governing the new ordinance. The
\nmeetings will continue, with the aim of reaching a consensus as to the
\nprovisions of the ordinance. According to the National Institute of Statistics,
\nthere are 1.2 million state employees in Romania, out of a total active
\npopulation of 9 million people. <\/p>\n
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Economic analysts say that an increase in personnel
\nexpenditure might increase the state budget deficit and, if other increases are
\nto occur, endorsed by Parliament, the risk of having to implement a new fiscal
\nconsolidation period will also grow. Therefore, in the near future, in order to
\nstrike a balance, expenditure will have to be curbed or more people will have
\nto be made redundant. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Labour and finance ministry representatives are drafting a new emergency ordinance on public sector salaries in Romania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":68260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[30450,116464],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-68345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-public-sector","tag-romania-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n