Prime Minister Emil Boc has had, at Victoria Palace, a meeting with trade union representatives, who picketed the Government HQ yesterday, to discuss the enforcement of the unitary pay law in the public system and the unitary pension law.

Prime Minister has assured the union leaders of all his involvement in the social dialogue and has declared himself a full supporter of social dialogue: "Social dialogue has not ceased and will never stop in the Romanian Government. I agree that these laws should be discussed. We can find solutions to improve them, but they must be enforced”.

The Head of the Executive has given assurances that the Government is concerned about trade unionists’ problems, insisting that the reforms should not halt and public expenditure must be kept under control.

"Romania cannot afford today the luxury to stop the reforms started. Romania cannot afford the luxury to give up neither the salary law nor the pension law, nor the National Education Law nor the reform laws of public administration, health or relating to decentralization. There are absolutely necessary laws for Romania's modernization in the average and long run" PM Emil Boc has stated.

In terms of unitary pay law, the Head of the Executive has declared in favor of seeking solutions for, in the limit of savings resulting from this law enforcement, all budget employees can benefit in the future, of equal pay rights.

"If, further to the savings to be made by unitary pay law enforcement, we will comply with the provisions to reduce spending with personnel from 9% to 6% by 2015, in this case, we can discuss about some additional salary rights but for all who belong to the public system and not just for those who currently benefit from some special provisions from collective labor agreements ", PM Emil Boc has stated. Prime Minister has also emphasized the need for proper implementation of labor law, given that the Court of Accounts filed nearly 400,000 notifications on poor implementation of labor law and illegal granting of wage increases.
Regarding the punctual cases of salary decreases in public system, Prime Minister has said that the decrease was due to the elimination of bonuses granted without legal basis. "Some collective labor agreements have stipulated for some state employees bonuses that were not provided by any law in force. For instance, increases for return from leave, bonuses for smile, and bonuses for foreign language skills where job description required knowledge of a foreign language ", the Head of Executive has stated.

With respect to the pension law, Prime Minister has given assurances that via its enforcement, there will be no decreases in common pensions. In addition to it, in 2011, the law provides a mechanism to increase pensions, which would take into account the inflation index and the value of gross average salary per economy. The pensions of 5,600,000 ordinary retirees will not decrease, recalculation will only apply to the approximately 200,000 pensions granted by special laws, Head of Executive has stated.

In this respect, Prime Minister Emil Boc outlined that Romania can meet the challenges it faces economically as a member of the European Union, provided that privileges will be removed and public money will be allocated with priority to investment and job creation

"Appropriate earmarking of resources is an important objective of the Government, earmarking without privileges, discrimination,” Prime Minister has stated.

The Pensions law and the special labor conditions was discussed on Monday, March 15, at 10.00 a.m., at a meeting organized with trade unions at the Ministry of Labor HQ, enforcement of unitary pay law will be analyzed at the Public Finance Ministry, on Wednesday, March 17, while Friday March 19, there will be a new analysis, at the Government HQ.

The meeting with trade unions representatives from Victoria Palace has been attended, from the Government, by Mr. Mihai Seitan, Minister of Labor, Family and Social Protection, Mr. Gheorghe Gherghina, Secretary of State in the Public Finance Ministry, Mr. Valentin Mocanu, Secretary of State in the Labor, Family and Social Protection Ministry.

Government of Romania