New amendments regarding holidays:
- paid days of leave for parents are also granted during school holidays; and
- employees belonging to other religious cults will recover additional days of legal holiday in another period
During this weekend, two pieces of legislation amending the legal framework applicable to days off granted by employers have been published in the Official Gazette. The amendments concern both the Labour Code and Law no. 19/2020 on the granting of certain days off to parents for the supervision of children, in case education establishments are temporarily closed. The amendments regard matters of immediate interest, mainly applicable with regard to the Easter holiday.
Amendments regarding the paid days of leave for the supervision of children
Employees who meet the requirements set out by law will be able to benefit of paid days of leave for the supervision of children in case education establishments are temporarily closed as a consequence of the state of emergency inclusively during school holidays.
Furthermore, parents may benefit of the paid days of leave inclusively in case before-pre-school education units are temporarily closed (e.g. nursery units). The latter amendments correspond to the recent of the Minister of Labour and ensure the alignment between the law and the provisions of article XXI of GEO no. 32/2020, according to which parents may benefit from paid days of leave inclusively for the supervision of children which are registered within nursery units, during the state of emergency.
Amendments regarding legal holidays
According to Law no. 37/2020 on the amendment of article 139 of Law no. 53/2003 – the Labour Code and of article 94 of the National Education Law no. 1/2011, employees belonging to a Christian religious cult will benefit from the legal holidays for Good Friday, first and second day of Easter, first and second day of Pentecost, depending on the date on which these holidays are celebrated by the respective religious cult.
To the extent that employers will grant these employees days of both on the dates set for the legal Christian religious cult to which the belong and for the legal holidays (e.g. the situation of employers who interrupt their activity on these days), these employees will benefit from days off cumulatively. Until now, the Labour Code did not provide for the obligation of these employees to recover the additional days off granted to them, therefore the legislative amendment clarifies precisely this matter: employees who will benefit from these legal days off cumulatively will recover the additional days off based on a schedule set by the employer.
