Employees with multiple state jobs, limit to 12 hours a day

The government intends to limit to 12 hours per day the maximum working time for employees who have several individual employment contracts concluded with institutions and public authorities, autonomous regions or state companies.

The measure is provided in a recently analyzed legislative project and aims to avoid situations in which employees exceed reasonable work limits, affecting legal rest and efficiency of activity in the public sector.

According to the document, the concerned employees will be obliged to declare, on their own responsibility, the existence of other individual employment contracts and the duration of the working time for each one. At the same time, employers will have the obligation to verify the situation of each employee in the general register of employees (Revisal/King – online) before concluding a new contract or to modify the work time.

The legislative project comes as a reaction to the finding that, in the absence of clear provisions, some employees in the public system come to accumulate more contracts, with program overlaps and exceeding legal work time. The initiators believe that, unlike the private environment – where the flexibility and economic efficiency are priority – in the public sector a strict regulation is required to ensure the protection of the employees and the good functioning of the public services.

In order to prevent abuses, the Labor Inspection will implement an automatic alert system within the Revisal/King – online, which will signal any exceedance of the maximum work duration due to the cumulation of contracts.

Failure to comply with these obligations, both by employees and employers, will be sanctioned with fines between 50,000 and 100,000 lei.

The proposed regulations apply to all institutions and public authorities, regardless of the financing or subordination system, as well as to the entities under the coordination or authority of the central or local public administration. The measures do not directly concern the private sector, where the work schedule is regulated with more flexibility, including by expanding the practice of telemacia.

The project is in the analysis phase, and will go through the necessary legislative procedures before being adopted.