Protesters from Romania’s National Railway Company (CFR) plan to cry out dissatisfactions at the central station Gara de Nord, after marching to the government, waiting for the prime minister to show up, union leader Ion Molea said.
The
police authorized the protest until 2.30 p.m. today, but if the 10,000
people plan to continue, it will be hard to stop them, Molea said.
Employees
are upset with the transportation minister’s refusal to communicate
with them after planning to slash about 12,000 jobs in the company to
cut costs. The minister is currently in the Czech Republic.
This
morning protesters gathered in front of the Transportation Ministry,
close to Gara de Nord, to hand in a petition with their requests,
according to another union leader, Gheorghe Popa.
Their
claim is that firing of personnel close to the retirement age be halted
and solicit the Cabinet to intervene to stop the technical decline of
the railway transportation system in Romania. Also, they demand urgent
solutions to write off the company’s historic debts and support in
buying electricity directly from suppliers, plus extra funds to insure
infrastructure revamping.
Yesterday,
a government secretary with the Transportation Ministry said that 3,781
people from the 62,894 employees will be dismissed, not close to 12,000
as unions say.
Two
weeks ago, minister Radu Berceanu said that CFR will be boiling soon
with the personnel changes he plans to make there. The minister said
there are too many employees working with CFR’s divisions. On March 20
he announced that 12,139 people will be dismissed.
As a consequence, on March 26 over 1,000 employees gathered at the central station Gara de Nord to pledge for their jobs.
Other employees in the public system are unhappy with the measures taken by the government.
Staff
working as auxiliary personnel in Romania’s justice is also mulling
about calling a strike, asking that bonuses the granted to them too,
not only to magistrates.
Teachers
also threatened to call a big strike and even block the school year if
the Cabinet applies either of the two measures it announced last week.
Education employees had two options according to the central
authorities, to either do without some of the bonuses or fire 20,000
teachers.
At
the beginning of the year, the Cabinet announced plans to drastically
cut spending by 20 percent in order to face the reducing collections to
the budget, caused by the economic crisis which forced big companies to
fire people and decrease production.
