As part of the activity of our law firm, legal consultancy in various areas of civil law is essential. Legal consultancy in the area of labor law is also included in this category. Our team of lawyers has represented the parties involved in labor disputes over time, but the most important thing is that they have approached the issue of labor relations from a preventive perspective.
For this reason, our lawyers specialized in labor law consider it opportune to report some important aspects for companies and their employees.
The Romanian law intervened in the regulation of acts and facts that constitute discrimination, first through the provisions of Ordinance 137/2000 on the prevention and sanctioning of all forms of discrimination, and later, in 2003, through the Labor Code. Recently, by Law 283/2022, the provisions of the Labor Code were supplemented with provisions by which employees are offered a way to address complaints directly to the employer. Also, it is expressly shown that the employees who formulate such reports regarding acts of discrimination must be protected by the employer, under the sanction of the law.
According to the ordinance mentioned above, discrimination means any difference, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, social category, beliefs, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, non-contagious chronic disease, HIV infection, belonging to a disadvantaged category, as well as any other criterion that has the purpose or effect of restricting, removing the recognition, use or exercise, under equal conditions, of human rights and fundamental freedoms or rights recognized by law, in the field political, economic, social and cultural or in any other areas of public life.
According to this ordinance, seemingly neutral provisions, criteria or practices that disadvantage certain people compared to other people are discriminatory, unless there are objective justifications related to these criteria or practices and a legitimate purpose for them, and the methods to achieve that purpose are appropriate and necessary.
In the event that employees, employee representatives or union members present a complaint to the employer or initiate procedures in order to ensure the respect of their rights, they benefit from protection against any adverse treatment by the employer (this is one of the additions to the Labor Code, which entered effective October 2022)
The employee who considers himself the victim of an adverse treatment by the employer can apply to the competent court with a request for compensation and the restoration of the previous situation or the cancellation of the situation created as a result of the adverse treatment, with the presentation of the facts on the basis of which the existence of the respective treatment.
Also, according to Ordinance 137/2000, the person who considers himself discriminated against can notify the National Council for Combating Discrimination within one year from the date of the commission of the act or from the date on which he could become aware of its commission.
The Council resolves the referral by decision of the Board of Directors, which resolves the referral within 90 days from the date of its receipt.
The person who considers himself discriminated has the right to request the Council to remove the consequences of the discriminatory facts and to restore the situation before the discrimination.