Romanian teachers, health workers reject new salary law: 'We're back where we started'

A new salary law in Romania has sparked strong discontent among teachers and healthcare workers, with unions arguing that months of negotiations have yielded no substantial improvements. They contend that the proposed legislation, which includes reduced coefficients and bonuses, is unacceptable and could exacerbate existing staff shortages in critical public sectors.

The latest draft of the salary law, slated for parliamentary debate, establishes a reference value of 4,000 lei for salaries paid from public funds, effective December 1, 2026. This figure is notably lower than the 4,325 lei in the initial version and the 4,100 lei proposed in July, according to political sources. The law aims to modify salaries across education, health, administration, diplomacy, and culture, but the healthcare sector unions find the current provisions particularly unfavorable, even more so than earlier proposals.

In education, the draft introduces increases to salary coefficients for pre-university teaching staff, a long-awaited revision. School counselors are set to receive a bonus of up to 5%, acknowledging their role in supporting students. The calculation for the class advisor allowance will also change, with the indemnity based on the number of students: 10% for up to 20 students, 15% for 21-30 students, and 20% for over 30 students. Primary and preschool teachers, instructors, and educators would receive a 10% bonus. For higher education, the project allows for a bonus of up to 10% for academic staff acting as year tutors, with exact amounts and criteria to be determined by university administration.

However, union leaders express deep dissatisfaction. Simion Hăncescu, president of the Federation of Free Trade Unions in Education (FSLI), told "Adevărul" that teachers reject the new draft. "We have, unfortunately, arrived at the same point from which we started, meaning we have lost more than two months of negotiations without any concrete results," he stated. Hăncescu described the offered "improvement" as a symbolic increase in coefficients by 0.04, emphasizing that both the reference amount and bonuses remain unsatisfactory.