The National Trade Union Confederation of Moldova is against the proposal to cancel the unused annual leave and submitted an opinion to this effect to the State Chancellery. Trade unionists stress that the adoption of this amendment to the Labor Code will lead to the submission of requests both to the Constitutional Court and the International Labor Organization to examine its compliance with constitutional and international norms to which Moldova is a party, IPN reports.

The draft suggests supplementing Article 118 of the Labor Code with a paragraph stipulating that “in which the employee, for justificative reasons, cannot use, fully or partially, the annual leave to which they were entitled in the respective calendar year, with the consent of the person concerned, the employer is obliged to grant the unused annual leave within a period of no more than two years starting with the year following the year in which the right to annual leave was given. The annual leave days that were not used after the expiry of the indicated period shall be considered used”.

According to trade unionists, the current provisions of Article 118 of the Labor Code are clear and in line with international norms to which Moldova is a party, and the informative note to the draft law to supplement this article with paragraph (41) is not based on concrete cases or situations. If the changes are made, they will generate contradictions or incompatibilities of the national legislation with the international labor standards ratified by the Republic of Moldova, which guarantee all employees the right to paid annual leave. Last but not least, the adoption of this proposal will provide legal possibilities for abusive application of this rule by the employer.

The Confederation’s opinion states that the real reason for the nonuse of annual leave is not related to the employee, but to a number of circumstances and factors underlying this phenomenon.