Letter of solidarity with the trade unions from Romania addressed to the Government of Romania

To the Government of Romania

CC: Trade Unions from Romania BNS, Cartel-ALFA, CSDR and CNSLR-Fratia

CC: International Trade Union Confederation

LETTER OF SOLIDARITY

Through this letter, the National Trade Union Confederation of Moldova, an active member of the International Trade Union Confederation, and on behalf of more than 400,000 trade union members from the Republic of Moldova, we express our support for the Romanian trade union organizations NBS, Cartel-ALFA, CSDR and CNSLR-Fratia on recently announced changes to the social protection system.

In this context, we express our disagreement and oppose the decision of the Romanian Government through its firm intention to impose the social protection contributions exclusively on the employees, starting January 1, 2018. Even more so, there have been no consultations with the social partners on this subject.

Thus, the National Trade Union Confederation of Moldova considers that the full transfer of responsibility for financing the social protection system to employees aggravates the major violation of the ILO and UN conventions on the protection of social protection rights. Such procedures are not recognized internationally and violate the principles of social dialogue and social responsibility. Therefore, it is a subversion of the Social-European model and we SOLIDARIZE WITH THE TRADE UNIONS OF ROMANIA.

In view of what has happened, we appeal to the Romanian Government to continue the veritable social dialogue, renouncing the idea of forced contributions for unilateral social protection from employees and finding an alternative solution, and respecting the ILO and UN conventions on the protection of social protection rights, as they are essential for Romanian democracy and in line with the option of the Romanian society for a democratic Europe.

We wish the trade unions from Romania BNS, Cartel-ALFA, CSDR and CNSLR-Fratia to succeed in the campaign for the protection of social protection rights.

In solidarity,

President                                                                                                               Oleg BUDZA

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Answer of BNS to the letter of CNSM

Dear colleagues and friends,

On behalf of the trade union members of the BNS and Romania in general, we want to thank you warmly for the message of support and solidarity delivered today. Indeed, we face with an unprecedented and extremely dangerous situation, because if this transfer of full social contributions is done to the employee, nothing guarantees that this practice will not begin to spread to other countries, undermining the principle of equity and social solidarity.

Fortunately, the campaign we have been running since the beginning of the month and our call for support and solidarity is echoing, and during tomorrow in Romania there will be a meeting of the European Commissioner for Labour Affairs with representatives of the social partners and members of the government. We hope to be able to determine the government not to apply these measures, largely due to the support of the large trade union family, of which we are together. Thank you once again for joining us.

Sincerely yours,

Mirela Caravan

Coordinator of the International Relations Department BNS