Civil servants threaten to sue Romanian Govt. over new fiscal measures

Civil servants in the central administration want to sue the Government for reasons that are mainly related to the new wage law and the transfer of social contributions from the employers to the employees. Nearly half of the civil servants in the central administration are affected by the new measures, according to Sebastian Oprescu, president of the National Union of Civil Servants, local Mediafax reported. “We will sue the Government on the three normative acts, namely the wage law, Ordinance 79 – which amends the contributions and transfers them from the employer to the employee, and Ordinance 90 – which says that the transfer of the amounts related to the contributions was taken into account for the salary increase for 2018. Unfortunately, not everyone was given a 25% increase. Others have benefited from a partial growth while some saw no benefit at all or, on the contrary, had their salaries reduced because they were above the grid,” Oprescu said. About 30,000 of the 70,000 civil servants in the central administration are affected by these three normative acts, he added. Many public sector employees have complained that their salaries declined in January this year despite the ruling coalition’s promises that wages would increase. Moreover, employees in the private sector also have lower salaries after the social contributions were transferred from employers to employees starting January 1. Last week, the Government adopted an emergency ordinance that will help maintain the net salaries of software programmers, researchers, seasonal workers and disabled employees, the categories of employees most affected by the fiscal measures that became effective on January 1. The emergency ordinance also aims to preserve the net revenues of part-time workers in the public and private sector, who were also heavily impacted by the recent tax measures. Romania’s labor minister defends Govt.’s wage policy amid controversies Romania’s labor minister blames employers for wage declines in private sector Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com