Foreign investors vs. Labour Code

The Foreign Investors Council in Romania (CIS) has identified a series of problems in four areas of the Labour Code draft.
“We did not get to see the entire code draft, but based on what the press has published we have identified several problems. The Foreign Investors Council sent its comments on various articles to the Labour Ministry last week and we are expecting a response,” Ruxandra Stan, CIS executive manager told Ziarul Financiar.
“The problems identified by CIS include the guarantee fund set up in the event of the company defaulting on salary payments – we feel it is inappropriate to establish such a fund; the unions’ role – not clearly specified; the individual employment contract – particularly those issues in connection to the employment contract concluded for a specific time frame, as well as the bureaucratic issues related to the employment contracts and employer-employee relations,” Ruxandra Stan said. She added a special think tank had been set up inside the Council to study the Labour Code.
After procrastinating for a long time, the Government has finally completed the new Labour Code and could take responsibility for it before Parliament on December 9. Under the pretence of transposing the European legislation, the new draft actually creates an administrative labyrinth for employers. Their only hope is that the draft avoids finding a solution to the most controversial problems and postpones making them legal for a yet unspecified date.
The Labour Code, as vast as it is now (more than 300 articles) mainly consists of framework legislation, with many details to be legitimised later. The text explicitly refers to a series of laws to be enacted in the future, which cover the guarantee fund set up in the event the company defaults on salary payment, the organisation of the safety committees in every workplace, the training contracts, unions, employers’ associations or the employment classification according to working conditions.