‘Major protest’ on 16 March, trade unions announce

Trade Unions have announced that next week, on Wednesday, a ‘major protest’ will take place in front of the Palace of the Parliament starting at 15.00.

Moreover, they foresee that there will be over 10,000 people attending the protest against the enforcement of the new Romanian Labour Code.

Until then, the schedule of the protests that trade unions have already begun since three weeks ago in many of the counties around the country, will keep running.

Ion Albu, Meridian Trade Union’s Vice-president, asserted that on the protest day Romanian National Railway Company employees would come out on a token strike from 7.00 a.m. to 9.00 a.m., and then would attend the demonstrations organised in front of the Palace of the Parliament.

Trade unions’ leaders claim that all the attempts which they have tried to make together with employees’ organizations since now in order to bring out real reasons for changing the Romanian Labour Code have been concluded by the accountability assumed by the Prime Minister as the executive ordered.

In unionists’ opinion, there isn’t any reason or any grounds for the estimation made by the Government as it doesn’t justify at all the new changes brought out.

Trade unions claim that the new law agreed by the executive involves the canceling of permanent contracts, the fact that the employee could be sacked out any time, that standard work will be set up by the employer, that work schedule will be unilaterally chosen by the employer, that collective Labour agreements will depend on the employers’ willingness and that probation will become longer and will be considered seniority.

Underprivileged employees and their withdrawal would become, according to trade unions, the eventual consequences of bringing into force the new Labour Code as proposed by the Government.

Translate by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University