The government has removed from the agenda of the Economic and Social Council (CES) the draft GD that provided for the increase in the minimum wage in the country. In this context, Cartel Alfa, one of the representative trade union organizations, accuses secret plans of the executive, which would discuss this with the IMF, the EC and the World Bank.
“The decision to increase the minimum wage was agreed upon together with the social partners within the National Tripartite Council for Social Dialogue on October 16, 2024, and the draft GD was made available for decisional transparency on the website of the Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity on October 21, 2024. The delay in publishing the Government Decision and its removal from the approval circuit indicates the Government’s hidden intention to freeze the guaranteed minimum wage in payment. It is a clear signal that hidden negotiations are taking place with institutions such as the World Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund,” CNS Cartel Alfa said in a press release.
Trade unionists say that since 2020 Romania has been in a situation of “increased deficit”, mainly due to the “extremely low level of collection”, but also the “countless exceptions” existing in the Fiscal Code.
After two years of the Executive demonstrating its inability to reduce budget expenditures and increase budget revenues, today it proposes to the Commission a plan that will hit workers hard, especially hard. The Medium-Term Budgetary-Structural Plan 2025 – 2031, not debated publicly or within Parliament, offers “rescue” solutions to reduce expenditures, without detailing how these will be achieved. The plan fails to clearly state the measures that future governments will take to resolve the budget deficit problem. Moreover, we are approaching December 1 and there is still no public draft budget for 2025”, the press release states. CNS Cartel Alfa believes that in recent times decision-making transparency has remained “a formal obligation fulfilled or not, at the discretion of the ministries”.
“Today the documents are removed from the ESC agenda, and a few days ago the projects were backdated, to show that the door to dialogue was open, only that “no one accessed it”. In this context, even if it is an electoral campaign, the principles of social dialogue, good governance and decision-making transparency must be respected!“, the press release also states.