The National Trade Union Bloc proposes to the Romanian Government that the minimum wage be increased to 4,600 lei gross for the construction sector, and in agriculture it be increased to 3,500 lei gross.
The NBS draws the Government's attention to the fact that, to increase the two minimum wages, construction and agriculture, the solution is to adopt an Emergency Ordinance.
"For the Construction sector, the Government has already initiated a draft GEO to increase the minimum wage in the sector, in this case the only aspect to be clarified is the level of the minimum wage and the date from which it applies. In the case of the Agriculture sector, at this moment it is necessary, as a matter of urgency, to amend Law 135/2022, given that the minimum wage provided by the law will be, from 01.10.2023, lower than that established by the Government Decision amending the minimum wage at national level. In this case, the minimum wage provided by Law 135/2022 will become inapplicable, given that it is lower than that established as the minimum limit at national level," a statement from the NBS states.
Applying the increase in the minimum wage in Construction to 4,500 lei would mean that when the law for which the Government assumed responsibility enters into force, the net minimum wage will be reduced by 56 lei. In order to maintain at least the net value of the minimum wage in the sector, the gross minimum wage in the sector should increase to at least 4,600 lei.
For the Agriculture sector, the situation is even more complicated, the application of the national minimum wage, namely 3,300 lei, would mean for employees in the sector a reduction in net salary of 94 lei, immediately after the entry into force of the tax reform proposed by the Government. To mitigate the impact of the new tax measures, the minimum wage in Agriculture should be increased to at least 3,500 lei.
"At the same time, we draw attention to the fact that at this moment, the tax facility (deduction of 200 lei) applied to the national minimum wage according to GEO 168/2022 must also be clarified, from a legal point of view.
Initially, the increase in the minimum wage from 3,000 to 3,300 was justified as a compensatory measure for waiving the tax facility provided for by GEO 168/2022, namely an amount of 200 lei is deducted from the calculation base of tax and social contributions for those whose basic salaries are equal to the gross minimum wage in the country," the National Trade Union Bloc press release also states.
At this moment, the situation of this facility is unclear, producing effects until 31.12.2023. This means that, in the absence of a normative act that would repeal this normative act from October, the net minimum wage will increase from 01.10.2023 by 181 lei, from 1,898 lei to 2,079 lei, following that on 01.01.2023, in the absence of the adoption of another GD to modify the minimum wage, the net minimum wage will decrease by 83 lei, from 2,079 lei to 1,996 lei.
Increasing the national minimum wage from 3,000 to 3,300 lei, provided that the 200 lei facility is not waived, will bring additional revenues of approximately 666 million lei to the budget in the last 3 months of the year. If the minimum wage is increased and the facility is waived, public budget revenues will increase in the last 3 months of 2023 by 1.1 billion lei.
