Emergency ordinance concerning the amendment of wage law, agreed upon with unions

The Government approved the emergency ordinance concerning the amendments to Wage Law, agreed upon with the unions, that will benefit employees from Health and Education, declared the spokesperson of the Executive, Nelu Barbu.

"Today, in the Government's meeting, an emergency ordinance was approved that amends and completes the framework Law 153/2017, known as the unitary wage law. It is about those amendments that were agreed upon with the trade union representatives and hospital managers, these amendments were agreed upon the discussions the prime minister and relevant minsters had with the managers' representatives and the trade unions' representatives," Nelu Barbu stated on Wednesday.

"Firstly, we are talking about adding some corrections for those staff categories that had smaller net wages in March than in February 2018. These corrections will cover the difference and will be updated according to the evolution of individual salary rights, under the current legislation," Nelu Barbu said.

The Government's spokesperson added that, concerning Health, the emergency ordinance establishes "the guard duty be removed off the 30 percent per authorizing officer, given that the guard duty represents a mandatory element in ensuring the continuity of emergency medical assistance." 

"Moreover, this normative act states that single specialty medical units, county ambulance services and the Bucharest-Ilfov ambulance service can benefit from the increase in percentage that applies upon the base salary amount. Basically, this amendment creates the possibility for the percentage established by the authorizing officer for the mono-specialty units and the ambulance services to be exceeded and for the establishment of the base wage for the positions of care director, ambulance service chief assistant and head nurse depending on the base salary corresponding to the chief assistant position and head nurse with higher education, respectively," Barbu said.

He also added that concerning Education, the emergency ordinance states, inter alia, that " granting the food allowance for higher education staff that benefited from food stamps in 2017, increasing grade I for the position of head accountant of middle education and correlating the salary level for the position of headmaster of the Teacher's House with that of a school inspector."