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The government is preparing to cut pay bonuses to public employees under the pretext of eliminating pay inequities in the public system, Secretary General of the Publisind Trade Union Federation Cosmin Andreica told AGERPRES during a rally held by the trade union before the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Wednesday.
"Yesterday evening we took possession of a document that is not public at the moment but that we posted for the people to see, under which the Citu government wants to get rid of pay bonuses to public employees and diminish percentage-based bonuses under the guise of eliminating inequities. In other words, for example the night shift bonus - which is 25% of the working hour: if you now receive 3 lei and I receive 2 lei, Mr Citu will come, eliminate discrimination and will give 1 leu to both. And then under the same pretext there will be practically other pay cuts, to which, obviously, we will not be able to react. We cannot tolerate such a thing under the pretext of eliminating inequities. (...) Public employees went through a similar experience in 2009, at that time they were told that they had to wait calmly, that nothing would happen, but there were those pay cuts by 25%, while exactly in the same period politicians were stealing hundreds of millions of euros, which proved to be the case in the years following the crisis. I think there is money, but the problem is how it is spent and distributed," said Andreica.
The union leader, who is also chairman of the Europol police trade union, explained that the main grievance of the rally is the cancellation of the government's ordinance freezing public sector pay.
"This is the third week of an industrial action schedule adopted by the Publisind Federation, which includes several trade unions of public employees working in Police, penitentiaries, courts, public administration, social assistance and so on. This week we are protesting before the Interior Ministry. We have just one demand: revoke the emergency ordinance suspending the application of law 153, the pay law," said Andreica.
He called on the government to be open to dialogue with trade unions on the pay of public employees.
"We expect dialogue from the Government in the first place. The emergency ordinance was given not 'at night like thieves', but 'on weekends like thieves', without social dialogue, without a consultation and without our solutions that we have made available to the Interior Ministry being checked. It would have been natural that before these cuts we would see if we could give up, for example, other expenses, as we proposed at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, namely pay for exceptional works and special missions, which are up to 50% of the basic pay. And we have seen this week that they went especially to the bosses who had issued the most fines," said Andreica.
