Hossu (Cartel ALFA): There will be street protests if Gov't does not raise minimum wage

A decision of the Government to not raise the minimum wage by 100 RON from January 1, 2020 would give the impression that the current Government is disinterested in the situation of the citizens and much more interested in satisfying employers, and the consequence of such a decision would be organizing street protests, said, on Wednesday, for AGERPRES, the chairman of the Cartel ALFA National Union Confederation (CNS Cartel ALFA), Bogdan Hossu. The union leader had a meeting, on Wednesday, with Labour Minister, Violeta Alexandru, regarding the procedures for raising the minimum wage. The chairman of CNS Cartel ALFA said the reasons that would push the unionized laborers to protest would be the level of the minimum wage and the lack of purchasing power. "Let us not forget that not everyone is a state employee. From this point of view, the minimum wage is one of the three instruments relating to the good distribution of economic growth that exists in any economy. There is fiscal policy, which is totally abnormal, because through the complete transfer of taxes to the employee there is overtaxation of the individual, of the employee per se, and the third element is collective negotiation, which today in Romania does not exist, meaning there are no sector-wide collective contracts, the national collective contract does not exist, and the number of collective contracts at the level of units that exist are concluded, most of them, by the representatives of the employees, which are in fact the employers' people," Bogdan Hossu explained. He also said that he discussed with the Labour Minister about calling the National Tripartite Council for consultations regarding the minimum wage, claiming that the increase in minimum wage would not negatively influence economic development. "The most important point of view of citizens and ours as a union is that we have the decent living basket standing today at 6,954 RON for a standard family, so it should be closer to 3,500 RON net, as compared to a net that we can liberally approximate at 1,300 RON," Bogdan Hossu concluded.AGERPRES(RO - author: George Coman, editor: Mariana Nica; EN - author: Razvan-Adrian Pandea, editor: Maria Voican)