Amendments to the Labor Code refers only to the heads who reached retirement age – President

President Vladimir Voronin urged the responsible persons of the Government and Parliament to monitor the correctness of applying by different state and private structures of the Labor Code’s provisions and the method of appointing and dismissing retired employees. According to a press release of the Presidency, the head of state reacted in this way to several press reports and to numerous petitioned submitted to the Parliament, Presidency, Government and other public authorities, mentioning that sometimes the new employing and dismissing methods are applied incorrectly. According to the same sources, Voronin solicited to organize and undertake some informational actions about the aims and content of the amendments to the Labor Code. At present, the article 82 of the Labor Code on “canceling the individual labor contract that is not depending on the will of the parts”, was completed with the point “I”, which provides for the unconditioned dismissal at “the employee’s retirement, according to the legislation in force, for work experience or if one obtains the right to pension for age limit or work experience”. The article was filled at the end with a note, which stipulates that the persons dismissed according to point “i” of this article can be employed on contract basis for a period of 2 years. At the press conference organized on Tuesday, July 11, the head of state mentioned in this context that changes to the Labor Code is not affecting the average employees, but only the heads “who do not want to quit their positions”. Info-Prim Neo has tackled this issue first time in June, after the mentioned-above amendments were published in the “Official Monitor”. The experts solicited by the Agency, the General Labor Inspector, Dumitru Stavila and the chairman of the Helsinki Committee, Stefan Uratu, qualified these changes as “violation of the Constitution and of the right to work and to an existence source, taking into consideration the fact that the retirement allowance is smaller than the existence minimum”. According to Uratu, the possible forced dismissals could be disputed at the European Court for Human Rights, saying that the specialists of the Helsinki Committee in Moldova are ready to offer legal assistance to anyone. On his turn, the president of the National Confederation of Patronages, Leonid Cerescu considers that amending the Labor Code will allow to get rid of the employees that are not loyal and will offer more rights to the employers. At present, the average pension in Moldova constitutes 459.47 lei and the minimum retirement allowance amounts to 336.4 lei for the employees of the national economy and 299.5 – for the agricultural workers. At the same time, the existence minimum amounts to about one thousand lei.