Hundreds Of Romanian Subway Workers March Up To Fin Ministry In Protest Over Wages

About 700 employees of Romania’s state-owned subway company Metrorex have gathered outside the Transport Ministry in Bucharest and will march up to the Finance Ministry protesting the management’s refusal to negotiate their wages.

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Unionists want a 26% wage raise and are angry the subway company's management will not renegotiate their collective labor contract, which expires on November 1 because the company's budget for next year has yet to be approved.

The demonstration is only joined by employees who are not supposed to be working, so subway traffic in Bucharest is not affected. However, unionists have threatened to stage a general strike as of November 1 unless their problems are solved and the action could lead to outright chaos on the capital city's streets because the subway carries more than half a million passengers daily out of Bucharest's 2 million inhabitants.

On October 13, subway unionists threatened to go on strike in November, demanding a pay raise of nearly 26% and calling for negotiations on a new collective labor contract. Union leader Ion Radoi said at that time that he has been sending letters to the management of subway company Metrorex ever since August 25, urging for talks on a new collective labor contract and the management said it is open to talks on a new collective labor contract, but not a salary raise, arguing the company's 2009 budget of revenues and expenses has yet to be approved.

Radoi said the number of subway passengers has almost doubled in 2009, the frequency traffic of subway trains was reduced from five to three minutes, another four subway stations were put in use, which boosted productivity by 33%. He added the company needs to hire bout 500 more people because its current 4,320 cannot cope with the increased passenger traffic.

Subway employees currently earn 1,500 - 1,600 lei (EUR1=RON4.2995) a month, plus bonuses for hard working conditions and night shifts.

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