Radio România Internațional

Tag: overtime

  • January 18, 2025

    January 18, 2025

    Protests – Thousands of policemen and other employees from the fields of defense, public order and national security protested, on Friday, in Bucharest, against the provisions of the government ordinance to reduce the budget deficit, which came into force at the beginning of the month. They requested the Government to review the provisions of the aforementioned document, which significantly reduces their income by not paying overtime worked on weekends or public holidays. Thus the protesters say the incomes of operative police officers will be drastically affected, with decreases between 1,000 lei (€200) and 2,000 lei (€400). The PM Marcel Ciolacu said that the issue of paying overtime in the field of public order will be regulated with priority at the beginning of next month, in Parliament.

     

    Verdict – The magistrates of the High Court of Cassation and Justice in Bucharest on Friday rejected the appeals filed by the independent candidate Călin Georgescu in the case of the cancelation of last year’s presidential election. He had challenged a decision of the Bucharest Court of Appeal delivered at the end of December 2024, by which the judges rejected Georgescu’s request to cancel the three decisions of the Central Electoral Bureau, adopted after the Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) decided to cancel the presidential election. Previously, Călin Georgescu, considered pro-Russian, declared that he challenged the decision of the CCR at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). He asks the ECHR to compel the Romanian state to organize the second round of the presidential election in which he and Elena Lasconi (USR) qualified. Based on documents declassified by the Supreme Council of National Defense (CSAT), CCR judges cited significant irregularities that affected the integrity of the electoral process and manipulated votes through social networks. Documents from the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), the Interior Ministry (MAI) and the Special Telecommunications Service (STS) showed that Călin Georgescu would have benefited from the support of state and non-state actors to win. After the decision of the CCR, the Government established that the first round of the Romanian presidential election will be on May 4, and the second round on May 18. Romanians in the diaspora still have three days to vote, but on the last day, Sunday, the polling stations will close at 9 p.m., Romanian time, regardless of the local time zone.

     

    Tennis – The Romanian tennis player Jaqueline Cristian (83 WTA) was defeated by the German Eva Lys (128 WTA) score 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, on Saturday, in Melbourne, in the third round of the Australian Open tournament. The Romanian reached the third round of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time. In the doubles, the Romanians Gabriela Ruse and Jaqueline Cristian, in different pairs, qualified for the second round, after the victories obtained, on Friday, in Melbourne. Gabriela Ruse and the Ukrainian Marta Kostiuk defeated the Australian pair Destanee Aiuava and Maddison Inglis 6-4, 7-6, and in the second round they will have strong opponents, Elise Mertens (Belgium) and Ellen Perez (Australia), seeded 6th. Jaqueline Cristian and the Italian Camilla Rosatello defeated the pair Cristina Bucşa (Spain)/Iana Sizikova (Russia) 6-2, 6-7, 6-4. The next opponents for Cristian and Rosatello will be Leylah Fernandez (Canada) and Nadia Kicenok (Ukraine), 16th seeds.

     

    Fair – Romania will participate in the largest organic products fair in the world, BioFach 2025, which will take place in Nuremberg (Germany), between February 11-14, announced the Bio-Romania Association, supported by the Romanian Government through the Romanian Agency for Investments and Foreign Trade. According to the Association, Romania has been present for 20 years at this event dedicated to agriculture and ecological products. Since 1990, BioFach has become the essential meeting point for organic food producers worldwide, offering networking opportunities and a place where ideas can be exchanged between all actors in the value chain of the organic sector.

     

    US – The inauguration ceremony of the US President-Elect, Donald Trump, will be moved indoors, as the weather forecast for Monday in Washington indicates very low temperatures, the American press announces. Therefore, the swearing-in ceremony, which was supposed to take place on the steps of the Capitol, will take place inside the Capitol Rotunda, just as it was done at the ceremony for the second term of the former president Ronald Reagan. Donald Trump has told his supporters that they will be able to see the inauguration ceremony on screens located inside the Capital One Arena, a sports arena in Washington with a capacity of 20,000 people. The transition team announced that, on Monday, Donald Trump would again use his own Bible, and also the “Lincoln Bible”, a copy known by this name because it was the holy book used by the 16th president of the USA , Abraham Lincoln. The Republican leader also used these two copies when taking the oath for his first mandate, in 2017, the EFE agency reports. (LS)

     

  • Romanian Employees and Overtime

    Romanian Employees and Overtime

    Occupational burnout, a syndrome that has been under scrutiny in Romania lately, is tightly connected with overtime or exhaustion during the normal working hours. In Romania, the workweek has more hours than the EU average anyway. According to data made public by the European Working Conditions Survey in 2016, more than 35% of the Romanian employees work more than 40 hours per week, against a European average of only 23%. However, to some Romanian employees overtime and the payment of such additional working hours is a mirage. For some of them, it means more money added to a fairly good income, to others is a guarantee for decent living, which their modest salary is not able to ensure otherwise. To both categories, however, such extra time and effort spent at work leads to health and personal issues.



    Dragos Iliescu, from the Psychology and Educational Sciences Faculty of the Bucharest University describes the effect of burnout: “Overtime is a stressor, that is an emotional and psychological stress factor. Like any other stressor that is active over a longer period of time, exposure to long-term stress unavoidably leads to diseases. Some of these diseases are mental, such as burnout, a syndrome that develops into depression. There are also irreversible health problems such as hypertension or myocardial infarction. “



    In Romania, as provided by law, overtime can be requested by the employer or the employee can volunteer to do it within certain limits. Overtime must not exceed half the normal workload of the employee. Therefore, in addition to the regular 40 hours, a person can work 20 more. Overtime can be compensated with time off — hours or days — or money, the latter being a solution adopted by many companies in Romania. One such company is Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries, the company that administers the shipyard in Mangalia. According to the workers’ trade union, in 2016, the company employees did some 100 million hours overtime. Marin Florian, a former trade union leader, currently retired, recalls how people used to work from early in the morning till late in the evening, even on weekends. According to him, all workers who were willing and could do overtime, would do it.



    Here is Marin Florian again: “There were situations in which some of the workers, who did not want to do overtime, did not do it. But they were not many, because they knew that overtime would bring more money to their salary. Overtime was paid double the normal pay for one day of work. People would do as much as 140 hours in addition to the regular 170 hours of work per month.”



    It was preferable to employers not to raise salaries, but to ask for overtime and pay for it depending on the company’s needs. This alternative was more convenient to them, says Marin Florian: “They went that far so as to request employees to give up going on vacation and come to work. The employees received money in exchange for their relaxation time. Following our notification, the Labour Inspection Authority checked for compliance, but the Labour Code didn’t include tough provisions, other than a 3,000 lei fine, which is close to nothing for a big company with a turnover of over 2 billion lei.”



    Obviously overtime has produced consequences throughout the years. Marin Florian: “58% of our company’s employees were suffering from various spinal cord conditions, hearing and vision problems and heart diseases. I admit that this situation even broke marriages, because the wife said she could no longer stay married to someone who spends his entire life on a building site, even though he was bringing money at home. There was also a different kind of problems. For instance, kindergarten children, younger than 4, were asked to define family and they only drew their mothers. When asked about their father, they said he spent his time at work and did not come home.”



    The emergence of these negative effects has also been confirmed by a survey coordinated by Dragoş Iliescu and conducted under a partnership between the National Trade Union Bloc and the Friedrich Ebert Romania Foundation. Dragoş Iliescu has shared with us the conclusions of his research. “People working overtime run the risk of getting exhausted, which is a sign of burn-out. Actually, the risk of developing it is by 127% higher in the case of people working extra-hours. A person working overtime runs a risk by 109% higher of not having a satisfactory family life. Consequently, extra hours generate a major disruption between one’s personal and professional life and there are more broken families, divorces and domestic violence cases reported. Also, a 96% increase in addictive behaviour has been reported, such as abuse of cigarettes, alcohol and other substances”



    Consequently, experts recommend that overtime should no longer be paid, but be replaced by a compensatory measure such as time off. Dragoş Iliescu: “The negative effects generated by extra hours, both at individual and organisational level, can’t be compensated by money or other financial bonuses. These negative effects can only be compensated with time off, either hours or days, depending on the case. Taking some time off is the only way in which negative effects produced by stress can be neutralised. The human body is flexible enough to repair itself in such cases. “



    The Romanian Parliament is currently debating a legislative initiative which, based on the survey conducted by the National Trade Union Bloc and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, provides, among other things, for higher fines for companies which impose illegal overtime on their employees.