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Ex-minister Jianu: If Romania’s new public sector law will be enforced, wages might be cut
If the new public sector wage draft bill will be enforced, probably after a half year the inflation and debt rate of the state will increase so much that salaries will be cut again, said this Monday Florin Jianu, representative of the National Council for SMEs and former minister for Business Environment, business-review.eu informs.
„We’ll see it applied for half a year and afterwards there will be no money, the inflation will increase, the debt rate of the state will increase an probably in very short time we’ll come back to the initial situation,” said Jianu.
He added that in 2014, the Constitutional Court decided that the salaries cuts from Boc government were not constitutional and the state had to give the money back.
„We raise awareness again, because we need an equilibrium, besides political things, justified economic computations based on the current economy powers. And once again to introduce the money source,” added Jianu.
According to him, the draft bill was voted by Senate with 54 accepted amendments admitted, but there is no evidence over the impact and without saying where this money comes from.
Opposition fears for the economy
Both opposition parties, the National Liberal Party, PNL, and the Save Romania Union, USR, have expressed concerns that the wage hikes will hurt the economy.
Liberal MP and economist Florin Citu, one of the senators who voted against the bill, told BIRN that he does not oppose a unitary pay system in principle, but says massive wage hikes in the public sector must follow reform of the public administration and must include performance criteria.
He says Romania’s public-sector wage system desperately needs to be put in order because many special laws regulate wages in different public sectors.
Previous governments have tried to come up with an integrated solution since 2010, he said, but he stressed that the current proposal does not amount to a unitary pay bill, but simply increases wages in different parts of the public sector.
He also questioned the government’s calculations about the cost of this bill - estimated at 32 billion lei - insisting that the real cost will probably be higher, and that the government will eventually be forced to re-evaluate these costs.
“The unions are now angry. You just can’t make everybody happy,” Citu explained, adding that Romania’s economy cannot sustain big wage hikes in the public sector in the long term without prior reform of the administration.
Romanian unions say the controversial bill will not actually ensure equal pay for public employees.
They agree that Romanians need better salaries, but are also concerned about how the salaries grow and what impact will they have on the economy overall.
Bogdan Hossu, Cartel Alfa union leader, said the bill was unfair as it did not take skills and competence into consideration.
“In terms of equality between sectors, it’s a mess," he said. He explained that, for example, a nurse who graduated from a technical school will now earn more than a central administration employee with a university degree.
He fears this disparity will fuel rivalry between public-sector employees, which will also affect their ability to put pressure on employers and legislators.
National Union Bloc leader Dumitru Costin last Monday also said the new bill fails to establish a unitary wage system, but instead presents a sum of different wage hikes based on different criteria for different sectors.
By leaving the local administration wages at the disposal of local authorities, and not including it in the bill, the law will lead to more corruption, Costin predicted.