The first regulation in ten years that was supposed to correlate the level of salaries with labour performance and efficiency in the case of regies autonomes and loss-making state-owned companies took a fall in Justice only two weeks after it came into effect. This is a genuine blow dealt to the Government and its economic programme.
Trade unions have managed to persuade Justice that, as regards the way salaries are granted, rights obtained and included in the law prevail over rights effectively obtained through labour. The principle according to which salaries should be linked to efficiency was rejected by Justice in Romania.
The Court of Appeals ordered, upon request of Meridian Trade Unions Confederation, the suspension of the Emergency Ordinance no. 58/2000 concerning the limitation of salary raises granted during this year. Trade union members consider that the ordinance breaches constitutional stipulations, as well as labour legislation, as salary raises are hampered and, moreover, funds for premiums and other money rights decrease.
This ordinance on the limitation of salary raises is part of the economic programme the Government negotiated with the International Monetary Fund. The Government pledged to keep under control salaries within regies autonomes, national companies and state-owned companies, for which gains are derived irrespective of the way these entities function. Employees used to get their money rather function of collective labour contracts and less depending on efficiency.
Trade unions protested against stipulations included in the ordinance, threatening to organise street protests and go on strike. Today, transports and electric energy distribution employees are to start a warning strike.
The National Trade Union Block announced a protest meeting on Wednesday and the members of four federations of Cartel Alfa, from mining, metallurgy, chemistry, petrochemistry and electronics will also take the streets on Thursday. Trade union members are determined to resort to Parliament and persuade MPs to cancel the ordinance.
"We did not file contestation papers to the Court but we decided to resort to Parliament to reject the emergency ordinance 58. We received guarantees from PDSR representatives that our move would be taken into consideration and that the normative act would not be passed," said Constantin Capatana, vice president of the Trade Union Block. He said that PDSR MPs were the only ones to voice support for trade union members but they did not mention a date at which their request may be tackled.
Salaries in the regies autonomes and loss-making state owned enterprises have always been a hot issue, as trade unionists could always impose their point of view by demonstrations of force, because of their monopolist positions, such as Conel, or due to their being an unique labour force supplier in certain regions, such as Sidex.
The Government pointed out that Ordinance 58 was part of the programme for curbing economy arrears. The Executive is aware of the difficulty of the process but calls for the understanding and wisdom of trade unions, as the perpetuation of arrears results in the increase of inflation and interest rates, the leu's devaluation and the decrease of the population's purchasing power.
Since the main inflationist causes in economy have subsided for now, the foreign currency market is stable and price increases linked to fiscal corrections are over, monetary indicators are under control and foreign financing is a reality, so action against inflation should focus on curbing arrears.
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