Romania Dumps Reform of Public Sector Pay

Romania's technocratic government has abandoned plans to revise state wages under pressure from the unions.

"We have decided to give up this bill for now. Our intention is to have a law agreed by all social actors involved," government spokeperson Dan Suciu announced.

Suciu said the government had taken in consideration "concerns expressed by trade unions" and would try to fit overall raised wages with "budgetary spending that Romania can afford".

In recent months, the government led by Dacian Ciolos has pushed for new wage law for the public sector that would correct discrepancies in pay among the lowest-paid workers.

The current law, which lacks performance criteria, also allows public-sector workers with similar responsibilities to earn different salaries because they got their jobs at different times.

Successive increases in the minimum wage in recent years have led to situations in which longer-term employees have lower salaries than newcomers.

Last week, Ciolos announced plans to raise public sector wages in the second half of this year by 5 per cent on average, with a hike of 20 per cent hike for workers in the social assistance sector.

The government planned to spend about 500 million lei [111 million euro] this year alone on increasing wages and some 1.5 billion lei next year.

It proposed a minimum wage in the public sector of 1,250 lei [280 euros] and a maximum wage, to be received by the President of Romania, of some 15,000 lei.

But trade unions expressed dissatisfaction with the scale of the planned rises. "This situation will only force qualified and young people to try to find work in the private sector or to leave the country," union leader Dumitru Costin said.