Eurofound's ERM database on restructuring-related legal regulations provides
information on regulations in the Member States of the European Union and Norway
which are explicitly or implicitly linked to anticipating and managing change.
Romania: Severance pay/redundancy compensation
Phase
Labour Code, Law no. 53/2003, republished in the Official Gazette of Romania no. 345 dated 18 May 2011
Native name
Codul muncii, Legea nr. 53/2003, republicată în Monitorul Oficial nr. 345 din 18 mai 2011
Type
Severance pay/redundancy compensation
Added to database
08 May 2015
Article
Labour Code, Law no. 53/2003 [Codul muncii, Legea nr. 53/2003] - 67
Description
The Labour Code provides (only as a mere possibility) that employees dismissed for reasons which do not pertain to their person may benefit from redundancy compensation under the terms stipulated:
by the law. Such pieces of legislation were indeed applicable to certain industries (and in particular to state-owned units), but today they are no longer in force;
by the applicable collective agreement.
The Labour Code - as a general law - therefore does not include explicit provisions on redundancy compensation; compensatory payments are currently only provided in collective agreements.
Commentary
Today, redundancy compensation is not universally granted, but only to the extent that the company is subject to a collective agreement which contains provisions on redundancy compensation, usually correlated with seniority in the company.
Until 2010, a collective agreement concluded at the national level was in force which gave employees the right to redundancy compensation in the event of a collective dismissal. This collective agreement covered all employees. However, starting from 2011, a respective national collective agreement is no longer in force and, in addition, there are very few sectoral collective agreements. Today, we can find provisions on redundancy compensation mainly in the company level collective agreements. Indeed, some collective agreements provide compensations of 6-12 average wages in the event of redundancy, but in many cases there are either no applicable collective agreements or the applicable one does not provide any compensation in case of redundancy.
Additional metadata
Cost covered by
Employer
Involved actors other than national government
National government
Involvement (others)
None
Thresholds
Affected employees: No, applicable in all circumstances Company size: No, applicable in all circumstances Additional information: No, applicable in all circumstances
This Eurofound research paper explores key trends in restructuring in recent years, highlighting the companies that announced the largest job losses and job gains in the EU. It builds on an analysis of company announcements recorded in Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor (ERM), alongside a new classification of restructuring events involving changes in company location.
Employers increasingly use tools such as email, SMS and messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal to communicate with employees. While these technologies offer both efficiency and convenience, their use in communicating sensitive information, particularly for notifying employees of dismissal, raises legal concerns. This article explores the legal framework on dismissals across the EU, with a special focus on the use of digital means for communicating employment dismissals. Drawing on examples from various Member States, it examines the legal validity of digital dismissals.
In 2023, thousands of workers in big tech lost their jobs. Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Salesforce had been considered to offer good and secure jobs up to this point. Giants of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, these companies are among the highest paying, with Eurostat data from 2022 indicating that workers in ICT had the second-highest median gross hourly earnings (surpassed only by earnings in the financial sector).[1] These layoffs were a shock, especially as the biggest companies had hired extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic. What happened in the two years after this redundancy wave – was that the end of the cuts or did the companies start expanding again?
In 2024, the automotive sector in the EU came to the fore in public and policy discussions. The focus was on the slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) sales, rising global competition, belated investments in new technologies, and the potential closure of production lines in Europe. A number of European car manufacturers and suppliers announced their intention to make large-scale redundancies and change long-standing collective agreements on job security and wages, while workers raised concerns amid demonstrations and industrial action.