site.btaEmployers Alert Watchdog to "Discriminatory" Seniority Bonus

Sofia, July 26 (BTA) - Employers have asked the Anti-Discrimination Commission to declare regulations introducing the seniority bonus discriminatory.

The employer organizations claim that the regulations violate a legal ban on discrimination based on age, personal and social status. Different pay for equal work is discriminatory against younger workers whose gross wages are lower because their bonus is smaller due to lack of, or shorter length of service and experience. The organizations also claim that there is discrimination based on work in the public and the real sector because the seniority bonus of civil servants was abolished through amendments to the Civil Servants Act in 2012.

On Tuesday, the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association, the Bulgarian Industrial Association, the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria sent a letter to the Anti-Discriminatory Commission asking it to instruct the Labour and Social Policy Minister to propose the scrapping of the regulations. The employers want the cabinet to cancel a provision of the ordinance on wage structure and organization, which regulates the payment of the seniority bonus, and a Council of Ministers' decree of 2007 which sets the minimum bonus at 0.6 per cent per year.

Employer organizations and the trade unions are expected to start negotiating about the seniority bonus at the first meeting of the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation in September. At Tuesday's meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, two deputy prime ministers and the finance minister, the four employer organizations again demanded that the seniority bonus and the minimum contributory incomes be scrapped and that a mechanism for setting the minimum wage be introduced. Last week the government assured the trade unions that the seniority bonus would not be abolished.