Employment Law Overview Romania

Introduction

Romanian employment law is the product of constant changes made over the last years in order to establish equilibrium between the power of union organisations and the power of the employers. This has proven a hard task. As a result, Romanian legislation has both pro-employee regulations, being one of the few that establishes the mandatory reinstatement of wrongfully dismissed employees, allowing all union organisations, in some instances including non-representative unions and union federations to participate in collective negotiations at the company level, as well as pro-employer regulations limiting the right to strike for employees under collective agreements.

Key Points

• Most disputes involve financial claims from employees that usually include overtime payment, granting of working conditions, bonuses, etc. Employers often face collective actions from employees regarding these financial claims. Unions usually promote such collective actions.
• Unions must represent 35%of the employees in one company in order to be representative and part of a collective agreement, meaning that one employer could have two distinct representative unions. For employers that don’t have representative unions, the right to negotiate and conclude a collective agreement is recognized to unions that are not representative and employees representatives are to be elected only when there are no unions present in the Company.
• Employers have the right to regulate working hours, but special legal provisions limit this right.
• Great importance is given to the form of the documents drafted by the employer. Court cases usually involve verifying the form of the documents and a significant number of rulings are based exclusively on this aspect.
• Strict regulations apply to individual and collective dismissals. In case of unlawful dismissal, the employee has the right to reinstatement and is granted all financial rights for the entire period in which he was unlawfully dismissed. Dismissed employees will often sue for unlawful dismissal.

Legal framework

Employment law in Romania is largely based on the following sources:

• the Constitution;
• European legal instruments –
  • European Union law (including Treaties, EU regulations and directives, as well as case law from the European Court of Justice);
  • protocols and recommendations of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; and
  • standards and practices established by the International Labour Organisation (ILO);
• the Romanian Labour Code;
• legislation and government decrees, especially –
  • Law nr. 367/2022 regarding the social dialogue;
  • Law no. 263/2010 on the public pension system set to be replaced by Law No. 360/2023 as of September 2024;
  • Law no. 319/2006 on health and safety at the workplace (among others);
• case law – the provisions of the Labour Code can be interpreted through generally applicable and mandatory decisions of the Supreme Court (High Court of Cassation and Justice);
• interpretative decisions of the Constitutional Court which are mandatory and generally applicable;
• collective labour agreements;
• individual employment contracts.

New Developments

The Romanian Labour Code went through a series of changes that were necessary in order to have its provisions up to date and in agreement with the provisions of the EU Directives regarding on transparent and predictable working conditions and on the work-life balance for parents and carers, mainly in October 2022 when Law No. 283/2022 was adopted.

In addition, in order to comply with the international recommendations regarding the encouraging of collective negotiations aimed at increasing the number of employees that are covered by collective agreements, in December 2022 a new law for social dialogue was adopted. During the same period Romania also implemented the EU Directive regarding the protection of whistleblowers by adopting Law No. 361/2022.

As of November 2023 employers also have the obligation to implement internal guidelines regarding the prevention and fighting sexual and moral harassment at the workplace. Most employees adopted general internal policies aimed at preventing and fighting all types of harassment.