Romanian MPs get higher salaries while many employees see lower wages in Jan.

The so-called fiscal revolution adopted by the Mihai Tudose government in 2017, which transferred the social contributions from employers to employees, has resulted in lower salaries for thousands of state employees and possibly millions of private sector employees. Meanwhile, the senators and deputies saw salary increases in January compared to December 2017. Some 22,000 employees working in ministries and the subordinated institutions had their salaries reduced by up to 40%, according to representatives of the public clerks’ union, local Digi24 reported. The Labor Ministry confirmed that some 40,000 public sector workers would get lower salaries in January versus December, but said these were mainly employees with very high wages. Moreover, there are over 2 million employees in the private sector whose gross salaries haven’t yet been increased by their employers so that the net amounts wouldn’t drop after the social contribution transfer, according to Dumitru Costin, the head of BNS, one of Romania’s biggest union confederations. Meanwhile, senators and deputies got a RON 800 (EUR 172) increase in their net wages. When asked to comment on whether his salary increased or not, PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, the speaker of the Deputies Chamber, said he hadn’t checked his bank account. Romanian state employees with big salaries to see up to 40% lower wages editor@romania-insider.com