Romania: Days off for parents caring for children due to school closures
18 March 2020 – Law no. 19/2020 on granting days off to parents for monitoring their children in case of the temporary closure of schools (“Law no. 19/2020”) provides that one of the parents is entitled to days off from work in the event that schools are closed due to: a) unfavourable meteorological conditions or b) other extreme situations, qualified as such by the authorities.
Categories of employees
Law no. 19/2020 applies to the following categories of employees:
- parents with children aged less than 12 years attending school, or parents with disabled children aged less than 18 years attending school; and
- the job position of the parent does not allow work from home / telework.
Law no. 19/2020 is also applicable to:
- the sole parent in a single-parent family, as defined by Law no. 277/2010 “On the allowance for sustaining the family”;
- the legal guardian of a child; and
- to an individual appointed to exercise the rights and perform parental duties towards the child.
Such employees are entitled to days off from work during the period in which schools are closed, as per the decision of the authorities.
Procedure
As a rule, the paid days off are granted upon the request of one parent, submitted to his/her employer, along with an affidavit of the other parent stating that the latter did not request paid leave from his/her employer, in accordance with Law no. 19/2020.
There are certain categories of employees for which the employer’s consent is required in order to benefit from such days off, e.g., employees from national energy system units, sanitary and social security assistance units, telecommunication, radio and public television units, and public transportation units.
Allowance
The amount of the allowance paid to qualifying employees is 75% of their salary for a working day, without exceeding 75% of the gross medium salary used for funding the state social insurance budget. The current monthly gross medium salary is RON 5,429 (approximately EUR 1,120).
The allowance for each day of leave is paid by the employer and re-reimbursed by the State-controlled Guarantee Fund for Unpaid Salaries.
Suspension of an individual employment agreement
Following the entering into force of Law no. 19/2020, one interesting question concerns the potential suspension of individual employment agreements during days of paid leave. This topic is of interest particularly for situations where days off granted as per Law no. 19/2020 overlap with a dismissal notice period. Law no. 19/2020, as well as the Statement of Reason of this enactment, do not provide any further guidelines on this topic. The government’s viewpoint on this enactment outlines, as a critique, that there is no correlation between Law no. 19/2020 and the provisions of the Romanian Labour Code.
In our view, suspension of an individual employment agreement would not operate in this case, given that:
i. the situations where the suspension of an individual employment agreement is allowed are strictly, exhaustively and expressly provided by law; neither the Romanian Labour Code nor Law no. 19/2020 regulate the suspension of individual employment agreements during such periods of paid leave;
ii. following general rules, an individual employment agreement cannot be suspended during days off granted under the Labour Code (e.g., the first and the second days of Christmas);
iii. from a practical perspective, the suspension of an individual employment agreement in this scenario would not have legal grounds for registration in the General Employees’ Register.
For more information on the topic, please contact Răzvan Popa, Partner, at , or Mădălina Anghenie, Associate, at .