Law No 69/2024 on the ratification of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No 190/2019 was published in the Official Gazette on Tuesday, 2 April 2024. The new legal framework protects both employees and people working, regardless of their contractual status, people undergoing training, including trainees and apprentices, workers whose employment relationship has been terminated, volunteers, job seekers and job applicants, and people exercising the authority, duties or responsibilities of an employer.
The ILO Convention extends the notion of “workplace” so that acts of harassment are also considered to occur in delegations, team-building, any public or private places related to the workplace.
Furthermore, the Convention clarifies that unacceptable behaviours and practices, or threats thereof, do not have to have a repeated character to be considered acts of “violence and harassment” in the sphere of labour law, they can also appear isolated. What is important is that such acts have the purpose of generating, have generated or may generate physical, psychological, sexual or economic damage.
The Convention promotes the involvement of the workers’ representatives in the development of preventive actions, by referring to the obligation of consulting them on policies regarding this field and calls for the inclusion of violence and harassment and their associated psychosocial risks in the management of safety and health at work.
This Convention shall enter into force for Romania twelve months upon ratification.
However, the provisions of the Convention need to be implemented through national laws or other types of regulations, through collective agreements or other measures in accordance with national practice, where national legislation is not in line with the provisions of the Convention or where regulations as described in the Convention are missing.
It is therefore the role of the state to ensure that the provisions of the Convention are followed and respected, but companies must also take them into account, even if the current legislation does not fully include them. This means that employers can insert these new rules in their company policies, which must be in accordance with the provisions set by the Convention.
To read the official article published by ILO, click here.
This article was first published by our Romanian member firm Suciu – Employment and Data Protection Lawyers. For questions on this topic or any other employment-related questions, please contact our representative Andreea Suciu, Founder of the firm.
