Observation of new Labour Code under scrutiny

Starting Monday, the Labour Inspectorate staff will be working more outside their offices and will verify if employers observe the new labour relations regulations in Romania.

The Labour Code and the Day Laborer Law came into effect on 1 May. Although it has been criticised by trade unions and some employers, the new provisions are expected to create thousands of new jobs, a more flexible relations between employees and employers, but also to lead to stricter sanctions for undeclared work.

According to the new Labour Code, recruiting up to five persons without signing individual employment contracts is a crime and fines of up to 20 000 lei will be levied for each person inspectors identify.

Until now, the fines in such cases ranged from three to four thousand lei for each person inspectors identified. Moreover, recruiting more that five persons without signing legal employment contracts carries a penalty of up to two years of prison.

The fight against the undeclared wok began on Monday, when controls were introduced.

‘Employers have been warned about the responsibility and necessity of observing these provisions. The Bucharest Labour Territorial Inspectorate has tightened controls in order to combat undeclared work, starting today.’

‘Initially, the control actions and this plan of action will be carried out between 2 and 31 May. They will be unannounced and will take place during day and night, depending on the subject of the activity’, Marilena Balabuti, the spokesperson of the Bucharest Labour Territorial Inspectorate, stated.

The new Labour Code has suffered other alterations severely criticised by trade unions and some of the employers’ organisations such as increasing the probationary period or the duration of the fixed-term employment contracts.

The President of the Association of Trade Networks Employers, Alexandru Vlad, considers that introducing the performance criteria is a major alteration to the Labour Code. All employees will become familiar with them by the end of this month.

‘The assessment criteria have been used before, but they used to be vaguer and included in an internal code or in the collective employment contract at the company level. Now they are included in the job description and are part of the package that employees receive when hired. Those who have been already hired will be assessed depending on these criteria’, Alexandru Vlad stated.

Day Laborer Law came into effect also

On Monday, the Day Laborer Law also came into effect. This law provides that the duration of the temporary activity done by day laborers is ay least one day, 12 hours a day.

Employers are forced to pay day laborers the wage they are entitled to. The President of the Agricultural Procedures Associations League of Romania, Nicolae Sitaru, said that he had been waiting for such a law that creates new employment to be adopted for a long time.

‘The procedures for hiring a day laborer are simpler now. Apart from this, it creates new employment because many employers would rather say they hire day laborers that actually work more than a year without employment contract. And now the law provides that one can not work more that 90 days without signing a legal employment contract’, Nicoale Sitaru stated.

The amount of the hourly gross pay can not be less than 2 lei or more than 10 lei per hour.

The tax for daily pays will be 16 percent and employers will start paying it to the state next month, according to the day laborer law.

Translated by: Raluca Mizdrea

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University