Bucharest railway workers end the protest, those from the Constanta unit refuse to lay low
Bucharest employees of the National Railway Company (CFR) resumed work after a spontaneous protest started at 10 a.m., but workers from the unit in seaside Constanta refuse to end the strike, declared the trade union leader Gheorghe Popa.
The protest in Bucharest ended when the employees received the advance payments on their credit cards.
The strike affected 15-16 trains, five of which were supposed to depart from the North Central Station.
The employees should have received the advance payment by May 30. Popa explained that the money were delivered yesterday but were not received until today due to some technical problems at the bank.
Employees did not receive their payments for May, declared for NewsIn Florin Dobrescu, the head of the union "Drum de Fier".
CFR SA officials declared when the protests began workers had received only half of the advance payment or 25 percent of the whole salary. Employees at the units in Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi and Brasov will receive the advance payment today, while those in Timisoara, Craiova, Galati and Constanta should receive it by tomorrow.
Romania's Transportation Ministry and railway trade unions reached an agreement on May 25 which translates into the dismissal of 3,700 employees of the CFR and the slashing of bonuses tantanmount for another 4,000 people.
Some 10,000 employees of CFR had protested in front of the Bucharest central station Gara de Nord and marched to the government on April 29. Their claim was that firing of personnel close to the retirement age be halted and solicited the Cabinet to intervene to stop the technical decline of the railway transportation system in Romania. Also, they demanded 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.