“Employees are no longer so busy, due to the difficult economic period we are experiencing, considering that companies do not have the same level of orders,” said PayLogic’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Cristian Udrescu. In the auto industry, one of the sectors most affected by the economic crisis, overtime fell 97.8 percent year-on-year in January 2009.
However, “overtime is rarely compensated in accordance with legal provisions, either by double pay or days off, as we found out during interviews with employees,” said Ioana Tot, Senior Consultant of Consulteam Romania.
Before the crisis, due to heavy workloads and little time for recovery, the only option employees had was to take sick leave. But given the current economic context, the number of sick days taken per employee fell by an annual 23 percent in January 2009, compared to a 105 percent increase in medical leaves in 2008 over 2007. In the auto sector, hours of medical leaves fell 69.2 percent.
