Nokia Romania is the largest employer of temporary workforce, ahead of Dacia.
Although the company reported to the Finance ministry an average number of 1,500 employees at the end of last year, the Revisal application (of the Employees Registry) at the Cluj Labor Inspectorate now includes over 1,900 active employment contracts.
However, the company publicly reported the total number of Nokia employees is 4,000, without specifying that the difference is accounted for by temporary employees, leased during peak production periods from recruitment and temporary work providers Adecco, Lugera&Makler and Trenkwalder.
“The collective dismissal procedure takes more than two months from notification and does not apply to temporary employees who work for temporary work agencies,” said Emilian Rosca, chief inspector within the Cluj Labor Inspectorate.
“Out of a total of over 1,900 active employment contracts at Nokia, 99.8% were on indefinite period, while the remaining 0.2% were fixed-term contracts,” he added. He also said so far Nokia has not sent any notification to the inspectorate on the collective dismissals it would make.
Companies are reluctant to reveal their number of temporary employees, considering that the use of temporary employment contracts enables employers to part with such employees more easily if production dwindles, because employers are not required to negotiate severance pay with them, or to negotiate the restructuring process with the trade unions.
Nokia and Dacia, which generate 20% of Romania’s exports, have between 3,000 and 4,000 temporary employees, and the two companies are in fact the two largest employers to use the advantages of temporary employment.
The new Labor Code, which took effect on May 1, extended the period over which contracts on definite period can be sealed from 18 months to 2 years.
Although the new labor legislation limits the involvement of trade unions in the process of collective dismissal, the Labor Ministry announced that Nokia Romania and two trade unions – the Nokia Free Union and the Nokia Metal Union – signed a collective employment agreement valid between 2011 and 2014, which was registered with the Cluj Labor Inspectorate on February 1st 2011. Because this contract was sealed and registered three months before the entry into force of the new Labor Code, the provisions of the collective labor agreement will apply.
On Monday, the two trade unions at the Nokia plant started negotiations with the company.
“When they closed down the German plant, they granted a severance package that started from 60 months’ worth of minimum wage severance pay, with the maximum being 220 severance pays. We want to negotiate based on the same criteria and we will soon receive the documentation of the talks between employee trade unions and Nokia in Germany, which we will use for the negotiations,” said Bogdan Hossu, leader of trade union confederation “Cartel Alfa”.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)