Neither unitary nor in any case unique...

The week that just passed seems to have been dominated by the re-heating of the episode with the unified salary grid. All the others had predictable developments, still without a prime minister, still with inflation, still with war in Iran, as we have already gotten used to. Well, the unified salary grid is not a new story, although it seems so. The first law of this kind was from around 2009, redone in 2010, I think (I don't intend to document the issue exactly, just to argue, as Caragiale would say), when there was an attempt to organize salaries in the budgetary system on a scale of 12 levels. From the start, the problem was that some high salaries had to be kept in place until those below the legal threshold caught up. Of course, this meant money, increased productivity, and, again, more money in the economy. We must understand that part of the effort to create such a grid in 2009-2010 was, in reality, an element of managing the economic crisis at that time (do you remember that crisis, yes?), not just the idea of organizing the system and making it fairer. A term like 2015 was advanced for the complete operationalization of the grid, as it was conceived. After which exceptions appeared, some appeared, some disappeared, bonuses, etc. We all know how it ended, in the sense that it never really ended and the need for a reform of the grid arose.

Now, it must be understood that there is also pressure from the EU model regarding salaries (in the sense of comparison with salaries from other more developed countries), especially in the areas where, in reality, only the state provides absolutely necessary and accessible services to everyone (education, health, public order, etc.). The private alternative is prohibitive for all of these when we talk about the largest part of the population or about more complicated cases. I won't get into the discussion about the gap between salaries in the private sector and the budgetary one now. The problem of low salaries in the largest part of our private sector is linked to the structure of the economy and the fact that, for 30 years, cheap labor has been a true brand of the country. Hence the strategy of many Romanians to work in Western countries to cover costs in the country, which are increasingly higher, but still lower than abroad. Until gradually, the cost of living in Romania was no longer a bargain and aligned more quickly with those in the West than incomes (which have also increased in the meantime, of course).

All in all, the public service is much more responsible and demanding today than it was 30 or 20 years ago. Anyone who does not recognize this is at least incorrect. Yes, we have the right to be dissatisfied, that all sorts of situations arise, that it is amazing how a multitude of problems appear under the conditions in which the resources in the public system are at a better level than ever in our history... all of these are valid discussion topics.

In 2017, another law on unified salary appeared, simply because the previous attempt had become a mess of exceptions and bizarre interpretations. Of course, there was still no money for the operationalization of the grid, in the following years certain categories' salaries (for example, doctors, after the pandemic) were brought to the level in the grid, while other categories remained, for the third time in the last 15 years (for example, education). I repeat, we can be dissatisfied with teachers, doctors, police officers, civil servants, that's not the point. And any comparison with the past, especially from the perspective of the relationship between the state and the citizen, is positive for the present, not for the past, despite the nostalgia, which I have already talked about here in a few lines.

Now we have discussions on another law, I beg your pardon, other laws, the current form not being, I understand, agreed upon by those who gave it its first form at the beginning of the year, when the governing coalition still existed.

Of course, the dissatisfaction is related to the level of salaries and the still arbitrary comparisons between occupational families. Honestly, it is also hard to base salary policy on the explanation that some occupations are more important than others. We can imagine indicators related to the complexity of work, responsibility, physical and health risks, legal risks, career duration, management vs. execution function, creative/thinking work vs. execution, free time, unpredictability and need for availability, other types of obligations that require breaking the usual daily work schedule, public exposure, all sorts of restrictions, etc. And surely such criteria are used in these comparisons. But these schemes, to be accepted by the public, must be transparent, negotiated with stakeholders, and have a sufficient age to be institutionalized. If each minister comes with their own vision, the message is not about correcting inequities and neither about stability, but about perpetual change and stimulating contestations. In short, such a thing cannot be done overnight and not 3-4 times in 15 years. Because we look back and see that for so long the reform has been reformed and no wisdom has accumulated.

In short, around the new grid we currently have only a cumulation of dissatisfaction. When everyone is expecting the promised salary increases, to come with a law that says it produces order and equity, not salary increases, is downright comical. Because order and equity imply public acceptance, and what we have now is neither the peace nor the social order that would allow this discussion, nor the authority that could impose it. This is because, for us, the nth law of unified salary (notice the absurdity of the terms!) is made in crisis, as a response to crisis, instead of being made in time, to function and to benefit from it in times of crisis.

If we look at the surveys from our country in the last 35 years, I have written this before, the dominant feeling is distrust. Practically, in almost anything you could not have trust. So the main problem of the unified salary law is no longer navigating through coefficients, increases and cuts in salaries, bonuses and finding the right place for each professional family. The problem is trust: everyone knows that if they do not receive today, in two years another crisis will come, another government, another law and nothing will be according to promises, as it has not been until now.