Romania - New collective agreement for metro workers - March 25, 2010

Metro workers in Bucharest have won a new collective agreement ending a five-month-long dispute. The workers represented by the Uniunea Sindicatelor Libere Metrou (USLM) union suspended strike action planned for 18 March after managers of the state-owned company Metrorex and the union signed a new collective agreement. The settlement includes a reasonable wage increase, a commitment to retain all jobs, the harmonisation of benefits for certain categories of employees and a pledge to improve working conditions. The existing agreement had expired on 1 November 2009; negotiations on new agreements normally take place 30 days before expiry. USLM organised a protest on 29 October calling on government to approve Metrorex’s budget for 2009-10; its failure to do so blocked negotiations. It also took a number of other steps to resolve the matter, including a picket in front of the Romanian government headquarters as well as strikes on 12 and 17 November, which the government suppressed through legal action.

English: http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/4328

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.