The problems of the Romanian railway transport system

Part of the workers of the state-owned Romanian Railway Company- CFR stopped working on Wednesday morning and, for 2 hours, hundreds of passenger and freight trains stood idle. According to trade unionists, the protests take place against the backdrop of failed negotiations with the authorities regarding the conclusion of a new collective labour agreement. The railway workers’ protest, the first in 2014, has affected thousands of people who had to wait in train stations for hours or had to look for alternative means of transport.

Valentin Țigău, 23.04.2014, 13:19

Part of the workers of the state-owned Romanian Railway Company- CFR stopped working on Wednesday morning and, for 2 hours, hundreds of passenger and freight trains stood idle. According to trade unionists, the protests take place against the backdrop of failed negotiations with the authorities regarding the conclusion of a new collective labour agreement. The railway workers’ protest, the first in 2014, has affected thousands of people who had to wait in train stations for hours or had to look for alternative means of transport.

The president of the Miscare-Comercial (Movement-Commercial) Trade Union, Gheorghe Fratica, says the protest is a warning signal to the board of the Romanian Railway Company and the Transport Ministry, related to the conclusion of the new collective labour agreements. He added that, in the past 6 years, CFR lost more than 30% of its revenues and other rights that they had previously had. “We hope to reach a consensus, so as to avoid a labour conflict” Fratica said, pointing out that they were considering starting such a conflict and even resorting to more radical protest measures.

The railway trade union federations had already announced on April 15th that they could start a labour conflict as of April 23rd unless the new collective labour agreements had been signed by this date. Railway employees are discontent with the level of their salaries, with the fact that they lost their free travel rights and with the bleak prospect of 2,500 employees of the Freight Division of CFR being made redundant by the end of 2014, according to the commitments assumed by the Romanian government as part of the agreement concluded with the IMF.

The Passenger Division of CFR pointed out, in a press release, that during the negotiations for the new collective labor agreement, the CFR board offered an average salary increase of 4% and promised not to make collective personnel layoffs, while the trade unionists asked for a 10% salary rise. CFR administers almost 15,000 kms of railway. According to experts, given the length of the existing railway network, the number of employees, namely 28 thousand, is rather high.

Last year, attempts to privatize the Freight Division of CFR failed. According to the governing program, the Romanian government wants to pump fresh blood into this division by introducing professional management and continuing the privatization process with a strategic investor, a project whose deadline was set in May 2015.