Minimum salary in Moldova is Europe’s lowest

The minimum salary in Moldova is the lowest in Europe. In a ranking which includes 29 European countries, drafted by the Federation of European Employers, Moldova is on the last place. According to the political analyst Igor Botan, the situation in the area of employees’ rights remains a problem in the second trimester of 2006. As previously, it is registered a small wages level, numerous violations of the legislation on labor, a poor development of the labor force, a high rate of unemployment. At the same time, Botan says that the wage increase is not significant and the minimum salary is not adjusted to the existence minimum. The tariff rate for the first category employees constitutes MDL 700, however the Government states that the minimum salary could be adjusted to the existence minimum only after 5 years and only if the economy will grow annually by 10%. At the same time, the quoted source says that none of trade unions’ proposals presented at a meeting with the speaker of the Parliament was taken into consideration. Among the presented proposals there are fastening the approval of several laws as well as creating the Labor Tribunal and an extrajudicial body that would solve labor conflicts, Labor Arbitration. However, the Government supported the amendments stipulating that the employees will not receive indemnities for the first day of temporary work incapacity and in the next 6 days the indemnities will be paid by employers. At the same time, the Law on amending the Labor Code was approved. These amendments allow canceling the individual work contract because of employees’ retirement. Some specialists qualified this law as unconstitutional and which violates human rights. Authorities justified the law by the fact that a correct implementation will not violate employees’ rights. Solicited by Info-Prim Neo, Dumitru Stavila, the General State Labor Inspector, declared that during 7 months of 2006, those 1927 inspections related to respecting the labor legislation disclosed 16 715 violations of labor relationships and 18 495 regarding work safety. In July alone 2 563 work relationships infringements and 2 563 work safety infringements have been found out. Inspections prove that the laws are violated by employers who do not conclude individual work contracts, diminish the wages, do not pay the salaries in due time, do not respect security and hygiene conditions.