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Study: Romanians’ salaries should have been 25% higher, according to labour productivity
The Romanians’ salaries should have been 25% higher in 2016, if they were according to labour productivity, calculations of the European Union Institute and the European Union Confederation, released by Cartel Alfa on Wednesday show.
The study shows that salary increases in EU in the last 16 years should have been four times higher than fully reflected by productivity increase.
“Between 2000 and 2016, productivity grew three times more than salaries in Germany and Croatia and twice more than salary growths in Poland and Belgium. In Austria, productivity grew by 65% more than salaries, by 60% in Spain and 30% in Holland,” the study shows.
In Hungary, Romania, Portugal and Greece, real salaries dropped in the last 16 years, while productivity went up. In Romania, productivity grew by 10% while salaries dropped by 15%, the study shows.
“Salary increase was left behind. Workers do not get the right part of their work’s value. The big difference between productivity increase and salary increase offers solid proof of the need for salary increases for workers throughout Europe,”said Esther Lunch, confederate secretary of the European Union Confederacy.
“In Romania, the elimination of collective contracts at national level and the impossibility to conclude collective contracts at sector level influenced the evolution of salaries negatively, especially in the private sector. At company level, only 1 out of 20 employees in the economic sector benefit from provisions of a collective labour contract,”the press release shows.
Gridlocks in collective negotiation are caused by labour legislation reform imposed by the International Monetary Fund in 2011, which all the then governments refused to correct, says Bogdan Hossu, the president of Cartel Alfa.
“In order to obtain a decent and sensitive increase collective negotiations between unions and employees should take place and the government should unblock laws to allow and encourage collective salary negotiations,” Hossu declared.