According to a communiqué of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection (MMPS), the Government approved, in Friday’s meeting, two normative acts by which it extended until June 30, 2021 the granting of the allowance for reduced working hours of employees (Kurzarbeit), the one for reduction of the activity of professionals, as well as of the technical unemployment indemnity for employees and other categories of professionals, based on Emergency Ordinance (OUG) 30/2020, for the restricted fields due to the Covid-19 pandemic, until June 30, 2021.
At the same time, in order to make the conditions for accessing the reduced working time allowance more flexible, a series of additions were adopted, as follows:
- the 5 days in which the reduction of working time is mandatory must no longer be consecutive;
- the employer will be able to reduce the working time of the employees by at most 80% of the duration provided in the individual employment contract;
- the prohibition of employment or subcontracting for similar activities subject to reduced working time will apply strictly to the jobs affected by this measure and not to the employer as a whole, as at present.