On December 29, 2023, it was published in the Official Gazette, Part I, No. 1197, Extraordinary Resolution No. 128/2023 on some measures regarding salaries of education workers and other branches of budgetary activity. This is the (probable) end result of a general strike in pre-university education that exhausted itself in May-June 2023 scale rallies – 20,000-30,000 civil servants marching in protest through Bucharest, a rare sight and one to note on the calendar in Romania. Rebellion and discontent emanated, let us not forget, from the teachers who were engaged in pre-university education, but the fruits of the won battle were reaped by everyone, if you can say so, and children’s teachers and educators, and university teachers from scientific degrees or university secretaries, whom they did not even lift a finger during the strike, apart from a few principled declarations in its favor, opportunistic, cordial, limited by the situation as a whole. It should also be remembered that although the trade unions have drawn up a program of protests since the autumn of 2022, which, to their credit, they have selflessly followed, after the general strike in pre-university education that began on 22 May 2023, the same trade unions have made it clear on several occasions that the strike suspended only when the union leaders want it, perhaps after some brief, superficial and quick polls in late-night online groups, which gave the correct impression that the strike was at least partly out of the control of the union leaders. The possibility of a real strike, not coordinated by shadow forces, sustained the teachers for another week of protests. When they began to leave the strike en masse, fining more and more up to the salary for May 2023, then, indeed, the trade unions quickly ended the negotiations with the government in the chair.

What was finally achieved? It is enough to make a trivial comparison, from which the change of measurable proportions that has taken place becomes self-evident: if, for example, the salary of a novice with a higher education in Romanian public education was 835 lei net in September 2009, and this is up to a 25% salary cut organized by inspiration IMF at the behest of President Traian Basescu and his flagship party, the late PDL, merged into the PNL, in September 2023, the salary was approximately 3,600 lei at the beginning of his teaching career. We are talking about the salary in euros, which increased from 195 euros (1 euro = 4.2658 lei on 18.09.2009) to 723 euros (1 euro = 4.9749 on 29.09.2023). If we take into account that the inflation rate in 2009-2022 averaged 4-4.5%, then we are talking about an increase in the minimum salary of a secondary and high school teacher for the same period by almost 3.5 times. interval. The first jump in salary was recorded in 2018-2019. The second – 2023-2024. Undoubtedly, wage growth without an explanation of real purchasing power and the nature of the minimum consumer basket means almost nothing, pure empty numbers. Salaries in education were extremely low in 2009, and the further we go back to the watershed year of 1990, the situation does not necessarily get better. The average net salary was 1,385 lei in 2009, which is about 325 euros at the exchange rate at the time. A beginning teacher in the field of education earned 60% of the value of the average salary two years after Romania’s entry as a full member of the European Union, which did not even allow a person to survive on this salary, if basic human needs are taken into account. a young college graduate (food, rent and other urgent payments, clothes, etc.). In other words, a teacher at the beginning of his career found himself in dire financial straits in Romania in 2009, with no support from anyone else or managing himself together with other, most likely family members. Let’s see how I have developed since then later. The average net salary in the country in December 2023 was 3,972 lei – that is, about 800 euros (gross salary equals 6,942 lei in the same month of the year). Therefore, a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree after September 1, 2023 receives 90% of the average salary in the economy. This is clear progress, but one should consider the average improvement in the standard of living in Romania between 2009 and 2023, which is certainly real. Enthusiasm, if any, should be tempered immediately: an average salary of 800 euros puts Romania at the bottom of the European ranking in terms of living standards. However, food, common household appliances and the latest consumer appliances are mostly imported, and the average salary of 800 euros is not enough for a decent life in Germany or France, where the prices of basic products are comparable to impoverished Romania. Otherwise, another factor to take into account is the residential address in Romania: 3,600 lei for a beginning teacher in Bucharest represents a different value than the same amount in a commune located in most of the country’s – rather poor – counties. Easy access to the informal economy or an underdeveloped market for agricultural staples changes the landscape for a rural teacher versus an urban one, although the lack of access to cultural entertainment or amenities offered by a large city is, conversely, included in the calculation of life satisfaction. You can live better in the village than in the city, having 3600-3800 lei per month simply from a nutritional point of view, although this is also a hypothesis worth testing on the spot, not just hearsay.

What conditions are we in after the promotion from January 1, 2024, clearly spelled out in GEO No. 128 of 2023, not to mention June 2024, which seems far away in time? Again, for ease of comparison, we assume an average salary of €800. Most salaries in Romania, i.e. more than 50% of existing contracts, are around the minimum, around 2100 lei net (around 400 euros). About 40% of current labor contracts significantly increase the average salary in Romania. We are talking – let’s not lose sight – about the great inequality in wages between the productive sectors of the Romanian economy. But let’s go back to the content of the emergency decree, which regulates the salaries of state employees in the national education system: the rector of a second-level university receives an amount of 20,888 lei gross, i.e. 12,219 lei net or almost 2,500 euros, which is equal to the salary of a pre-university teacher in Germany. in the first 5 years of work in the system (with an increase from June 2024, the rector reaches 2,600 euros per month). This is a small salary for someone in the position of rector of a university, just three times the average salary in the economy in 2023 and six times the minimum. The secondary school inspector of the second degree, one for each of the 41 counties of Romania, receives a remuneration of 13,341 lei gross, in other words 7,805 lei net. The director of a kindergarten, school, secondary school or national college of the II degree has a salary of 11,242 lei gross, i.e. almost 6,600 lei net per month. A university professor with more than 25 years of experience has a gross salary of 13,388 lei – approximately 8,000 lei per month. A teacher with a first degree in pre-university education and more than 25 years of experience at the department has a gross salary of 7,726 lei or almost 4,600 lei per month starting from February 2024. A university assistant in the first 5 years of activity earns 6,520 lei from June 2024, that is, a little more than 3,800 lei. A teacher with a final degree in the first 5 years of his career still has, starting June 2024, a gross salary of 6,501 lei – no more than 3,800 lei per month. It is impossible to deny the economic realism behind this increase, which is in line with the overall growth of the Romanian economy as a whole, despite the existence of incredible levels of tax evasion and illegal work until 2024. What is surprising are some strange disparities within the salary scale: a university lecturer with 15-20 years of experience in the department has a gross income of 8,315 lei starting in June 2024, in other words, almost 4,900 lei net, while a university assistant with with up to 3 years of experience, uses a gross salary of 6,520 lei, earns a little more than 3,800 lei. We are talking about almost 20 years of experience accumulated between two university degrees, books, scientific articles, conferences, etc. on the part of the teacher, and the salary difference between a well-informed teacher and a naive university assistant is only 1000 lei or 200 euros. A teacher of the second degree, who has more than 25 years of teaching experience, receives a gross salary of 7,385 lei or 4,320 lei on the card, that is, even 600 lei more than a debutante teacher in the first year of work at the department. From this we easily concluded that the current wage increase was believed to attract young labor into the education system, where there are serious shortages in this regard, but not very serious, but the existing staff, if not enrolled in the highest category of the salary scale, is partially neglected. He is treated, despite his seniority and rank as a teacher, as a slightly higher version of the novice. In other words, these salary incomes deserve to be matched with other allowances enjoyed by only a minority of pre-university teaching staff: supervision, hourly pay if such hours are available, merit grading at 5 years, doctorate allowance – here you can easily calculate the real salary of some teachers with a first degree and a maximum experience of more than 25 years, which can reach about 9000 lei net in some months. It is true that these examples are rare from a statistical point of view and cannot be considered the rule, but these increases somehow eliminate the too close proximity of salaries in the education system and increase personal ambitions to get a set of increases as soon as possible.

In general, it can be said without much error that the strike, as it was conceived, turned out to be a real success. These wage increases will undoubtedly, in one form or another, fall on the shoulders of the tax-paying population of Romania sooner or later. _

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