People usually negotiate the net salary in Romania, but the employment contracts record the gross salaries.
“There will be tens of thousands of lawsuits if employers do not raise the gross salaries. Employers do not even need to call employees for negotiations, they must comply with the new definition of the gross salary. You can’t disadvantage employees,” said lawyer Gheorghe Piperea, a professor of commercial law at the Law School of the University of Bucharest.
“Employers should prove that its overall salary expenses increased, which is not the case, they drop by several tens of lei per month for an average salary.”
Lawyers specializing in labor law say the employees could win their cases in court if they can prove they negotiated a specific net salary and the employer did not comply with their end the deal.
“The unpredictability theory should apply, which says that to the extent conditions change, contracts should be updated, too, especially in favor of employees, but that is risky,” said Costel Gilca, a lawyer specializing in labor law.
“Eventually, even though people usually negotiate the net salary, the employment contract records the gross salary and it is hard to prove in court one negotiated the net salary. Usually, the negation took place between two people, the employee and the HR person, without any witnesses.”
The modification to the Fiscal Code already published in the Official Gazette transfers social security taxes from employer to employee and cuts them from 39% of the gross salary to 37%. Therefore, for employees to keep the net salaries of 2017, the gross salaries should be increased by 17% to 20% in 2018.
“No one can force employers to raise the gross salaries, they have their own economic interests to see to. I think that more than 60% of the companies will mostly offset this intervention of the lawmaker,” said Professor Magda Volonciu, PH.D., a lawyer who specializes in labor law and is the managing partner of SCPA Magda Volonciu si Asociatii.
“What happens if the employees in the remaining 40% of the companies that do not raise the gross salaries go to court? I think no one will find in their favor because employers are not required to raise the salaries, they are only required to start negotiation of the new contracts and may or may not raise salaries as a result.”
This is also the opinion of lawyer Corneliu Bente, who says that employees as individuals are not protected because the employment contract does not specify the net salary they should get.
“The employees who will want to sue employers to court over not getting a raise of their gross salaries do not stand a chance of winning because employers were not required to give this raise. We are wondering what would happen if this ordinance were rejected and a decision to return to the current legislation was made, wouldn’t that leave the employers with some raises they are unable to take back?”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)