New labour minister plans to amend Labour Code

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In July 2004, a new minister of labour was appointed in Romania. One of the priorities of the new minister, Dan Mircea Popescu, is to amend the Labour Code substantially in line with the demands of employers' organisations. Trade unions are very strongly opposed to such changes.

Following a reshuffle of the Social Democratic Party (Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) government in July 2004, a new minister was appointed at the Ministry of Labour, Social Solidarity and Family (Ministerul Muncii, Solidarităţii Sociale şi Familiei, MMSSF) - Dan Mircea Popescu, who also held the same position in the 1992-6 PSD government. He will be in position for approximately five months until the forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. Apart from carrying forward the programmes put in place by his predecessor, Elena Dumitru, the priorities announced by the new minister include:

• combating impoverishment and marginalisation, especially among pensioners and adolescents;

• improving 'quality' in work, by adopting a new law on wages; and

• setting up expanded adult training programmes, which will also address unemployed people in rural areas (according to forecasts, the latter's number may rise to 2 million-3 million in the next few years).

However, the minister's most controversial plan is to amend 72 articles of the new Labour Code adopted in 2003 (RO0401107F), out of a total of 298. The aim is to address a number of long-standing demands from employers’ organisations (RO0308102N). For their part, trade unions have reacted strongly to these plans and accused the Ministry of Labour, Social Solidarity and Family of bypassing the normal channels of social dialogue. They claim that, following talks held between representatives of the Ministry, employers' organisations, the Council of Foreign Investors (Consiliul Investitorilor Străini, CIS), the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it has been decided that a third of the Labour Code will be adjusted, even if this undermines the establishment of 'European-type' industrial relations in Romania. The unions claim that these interests 'want simpler ways to employ but especially to make employees redundant … They ignore the values of collective and individual bargaining in establishing special clauses in employment contracts.'

Trade union leaders have stated on a number of occasions that they will oppose any change to the Labour Code.