AmCham Romania supports government intiative to ammend labor legislation

The American Chamber of Commerce in Romania (AmCham Romania) announced it supports the government’s initiative to amend the labor legislation and reiterates the importance of substantial changes to the benefit of all involved parties: employees – employers – government.

Through approximately 150 proposed amendments to the Labor Code submitted to the Ministry of Labor, Family and Social Protection during the public consultation period, AmCham Romania promotes four major principles: Enforcing performance as basic principle with regard to labor relations; Flexible labor relations; Applying the collective bargaining agreement concluded at industry level only to signatory parties and removing the provisions related to the national collective bargaining agreement; Clearer and simpler legal provisions.

In this context AmCham proposed the inclusion of performance among the governing principles of the labor relations, including hiring and dismissing employees.

Considering performance in the hiring process refers to providing a probation period that will allow the employer to thoroughly assess the potential of the employee, and, at the same time to enable the employee to decide the extent to which he is fit for one employer and his capacity to be competitive working for this employer.

To address the needs of both employer and employee as detailed above, AmCham considers that the following measures are necessary: Providing for a longer probation period, both in cases of individual labor contracts signed for un undetermined period, and also for temporary individual labor contracts; Possibility for all new employees to go through a probation period, regardless of the number of previous employees going through probation periods for the same position; Possibility for employees to go through a probation period following the completion of initial professional formation programmes; in case the employee is included in such programmes and their timing coincides with the probation period, this does not meet its objective, as detailed above.