Something is wrong at work. This page tells you which door to knock on.

For unpaid or short-paid wages, contact the Labour Inspectorate office responsible for the employer. A petition sent to the wrong authority is subject to the forwarding rule; keep a copy and ask where it was sent.

Before you contact them, save what you have: your contract, any payslips, and your bank statements. Since 2026 your wage must be paid by bank transfer, not in cash — which means your bank account is itself the record of what did and did not arrive.

Ask for the Compartiment Relații de Muncă (labour relations department). The office finder below gives you that direct line rather than the switchboard.

Put it in writing → They answer in Romanian. This writes the complaint for you, in Romanian, with an English version beside it.

Your passport is yours. An employer, an agency or a landlord has no right to keep it, and holding it to stop you leaving a job is not a contract matter — it is coercion.

Call 112 (free, any phone, no credit needed). If you would rather not go to the police first, the anti-trafficking line below is free and exists for exactly this.

Recruitment fees charged to the worker are illegal in Romania. If you or your family paid an agent — in Romania or before you left home — that money was taken from you against the law.

Check whether the agency that placed you is on the state's register of authorised placement agencies at workinromania.gov.ro. Whether it is or is not changes who you complain to and what can be done.

Getting the money back is not simple and this page will not pretend otherwise. But an illegal fee is evidence, and it matters in every other complaint you make.

If your employer provides your housing, they may deduct at most 25% of your net monthly wage for it. Anything above that is not a rent dispute — it is an unlawful deduction from your pay.

The only other things that may lawfully come out of your pay are visa and residence-permit fees.

This is the same complaint route as unpaid wages: your county ITM, labour relations department.

Put it in writing → They answer in Romanian. This writes the complaint for you, in Romanian, with an English version beside it.

Since 27 April 2026 the rule is: you may change employer by resigning, after at least 6 months with your current employer. You do not need your employer's written permission — that older rule was repealed.

Two things narrow it, and you need both:

• Between 6 months and 2 years, if a placement agency brought you here, the change normally goes through that agency.
• The 6 months can be shortened where the employer has seriously breached your contract.

If your work ends before your permit expires, your right to stay does not end that day. It stays valid for up to 90 days from the date the end of your employment is registered — longer if you are receiving unemployment benefit.

If you sign a new contract inside that window, your residence right continues to the normal expiry of your permit.

If a placement agency placed you, it is obliged to bring you at least two job offers with another employer inside those 90 days.

If you are in danger now, call 112. It is free from any phone, including one with no credit.

For forced labour and trafficking, ANITP runs a free national line:

0800 800 678

This line is for trafficking and forced labour — being unpaid, on its own, is an ITM matter instead. But if you are being held, threatened, or made to work to pay off a debt, this is the right number.

Harassment complaints go to your county ITM, like wage complaints.

Say plainly what happened to you. Do not reshape a wage complaint into a harassment complaint to gain anonymity — a complaint that does not match its evidence helps nobody, least of all you. If you are experiencing both, they are two complaints, and you can make both.

Put it in writing → They answer in Romanian. This writes the complaint for you, in Romanian, with an English version beside it.

Permits, residence documents, and registering a new contract inside the 90-day window are all IGI matters — not ITM, and not the police.

IGI works through county offices (formațiuni teritoriale). There is no plain list of their numbers — find yours through the map on igi.mai.gov.ro, and expect to go in person with your documents. The website has an English version; the counter usually does not.

If your job has just ended, The Clock works out how long your right to stay runs — check that date before you plan the visit, not after.