More noise, more self-respect, more daring
Strike at the Dacia-Renault plant in Romania: a
turning point
On March 24, about 8,000 of the 13,000 workers at the Dacia
car factory in Romania went on open-ended strike. One of their demands was a
wage increase of 50-70 percent. For the first time in a strike in Romania, the
strikers did not base their demand on standard wages in Romania but compared
themselves to Renault workers in Turkey or France, who earn between 900 and
2000 euros for the same work (the workers at Dacia earn about 300 euros). This
strike at Dacia is the most significant struggle in the Romanian private sector
since 1989 and could be the beginning for a wave of strikes for better living
conditions in Romania.
Three
days on site
For many days the internet was our only source of
information about the strike. An article in the German daily newspaper Der
Tagesspiegel states that the Dacia workers had been impressed by the strike of
German train drivers which took place in the winter 2007/2008. We decided
spontaneously to go to Romania and find out what is actually going on there.
After a two-day journey we finally reached the city of Pitesti at 1am. During
the trip we were stuck without any recent news: yesterday's newspaper, nothing
about the strike on the radio. Maybe it had ended before we had even arrived.
Finally on the evening news: the Dacia management have made a new offer to the
workers; the union leaders are to discuss the offer with the strikers the next
morning and hold a vote on whether to accept it. We did not want to lose any
time and drove on to Mioveni, a smaller town next to Pitesti, where the Dacia
factory stretches out over a hill. There are only few cars on the huge parking
lot and it is very quiet. Some security workers are around but no sign of any
picket lines.
On the next morning, a
Wednesday and the 17th day of the strike, we went back up the hill towards the
plant. The parking lot was full of cars and company busses. The early shift was
at their workplace. But there was no work going on, the assembly lines weren't
running. Some workers were emerging from
the main entrance. When we asked one for an update he said: The
offer is bad. Everybody is against it. The strike will continue.
As he was speaking, a written vote was being held inside.
Something happened inside our heads
The most important demand of the striking workers was
a wage rise of 550 RON (148 euros) per month. They also wanted a 5-10 percent
part of the profits, an increase of Christmas and Easter money (in both cases
to half the monthly wage) as well as
holiday pay (one month's wage) and an increase in extra pay for heavy work of
200 RON per year; they also demanded a 15 per cent discount when buying Renault
products. During the talks with the workers we realised that these demands were
really the absolute minimum for them and that they wouldn't give in on them.
They expressed anger about the stressful work, the assembly-lines never
stopping, the foremen in their backs endlessly controlling and pushing.
Management wants to introduce weekend shifts, the so-called four shift system
with only one free weekend in the month.
Later we spoke to a group of older workers who were
standing around in the parking lot, drinking home-made wine from plastic cups
and arguing loudly. They were happy to tell us about their working conditions
and what was happening with the strike: We've let them fuck us
around for too long. Something happened inside our heads! We understood that we
are doing the same work here as the Renault workers in France yet our wages are
so low. We are not second or third world anymore.
The
factory on the hill
For most of the years since 1968 the plant on the hill
in Mioveni produced the Dacia 1300 under licence from Renault. The plant was
the pride of Dictator Ceausescu. Renault finally took the plant over in 1999
and dismissed half of the 27 000 people employed at that time. Since 2004, the
cheap Dacia Logan car has been built here. Originally this car was intended for
the Eastern-European market and is built accordingly e.g. an entire pig can
fit into the back of the station wagon version. Then, because of the decreasing
incomes of people in Western Europe, the car became very popular there as well.
In Germany one can buy it for 7200 euros.
Today the factory complex, the only place where the
Logan is produced, consists of a mechanics section (motor and gear
construction) and section for car body assembly (pressing plant, body shell,
paint finishing, assembly). Apart from that Dacia-Renault has its local
development division for the Logan model with about 300 engineers. The workers
told us that they are already working on new, modern CNC machines in the motor
and gear construction section. In the car body assembly section work is mostly
done manually with a low level of technology.
There are also factories of supply firms on the site
with a further few thousand employees. For example Johnson Controls makes the seats for Logan, while Valeo makes the
cables. During the strike some information about other suppliers appeared in
the media. The company Elba in Timisoara, which makes the reflectors for the
cars, announced that they had to shut down production because of the strike in
Dacia. Another supplier, Borla Romcat, located near Pitesti, said they had
to dismiss 60 per cent of their
employees because of the long-term strike in Mioveni, as Dacia is their main
client. Borla Romcat produces exhaust pipes for Logan.
There is an export centre at the bottom of the hill,
opposite the Mioveni prison. There the finished Logan cars are taken apart
again (CKD, completely knocked down), put in boxes and sent to other assembly
factories in Russia, India and Morocco. This way the high customs costs for
complete cars are avoided.
Old
and young muncitori
During the rally in Pitesti the next day we got to
know Rodica. She was hanging out with an older colleague, a neighbour from
Mioveni. I asked how many women were working in the factory. They said that
half of the crew are women. They are doing the same work as the men and are
paid the same. Most of them went directly from school to the factory. Many of
the Dacia muncitori (Romanian for 'workers'),
both men and women, already have 20-30 years of work at the assembly-line in
this factory behind them. Rodica has worked here for 31 years and earns 253
euros before tax, which means she ends up with 157 euros per month in her
pocket. Her husband used to working at Dacia, too, but was given a redundancy
payment in 2002. Since then he has been working on construction sites and earns
less than his wife. Both their children are grown up, and both had no choice
but to start to work straight after school. The daughter is 28 she still lives
with her parents in the flat they own in a 60s socialist-block-style building
in Mioveni. In order to be able to buy a new Logan, Rodica and her husband gave
up their traditional holidays by the Black Sea. As a worker at Dacia it takes
Rodica seven years to pay off the instalments on the car, which are half her
monthly wage. Only 30 per cent of her colleagues own a car.
While the old ones make up about two thirds of
the production workers, more than 3500 young people have been employed in the
past year. Qualifications are not important. They take anybody. On the buses
which transport most of the workers to the factory every day there is a big
advertisement: We are hiring! The new contracts are
limited to 3 or 6 months. Sackings and new starts are a daily occurrence.
However, young workers are also resigning: When somebody stays at
Dacia, it means that she/he has family, or debts, or didn't find anything
better in other countries. said Radu, who works at the assembly sector.
The young
ones
earn the minimum wage of 200 euros before tax. Constantin already has an
unlimited contract even though he hasn't been working at Dacia for long. We
were laid off in 2006 after three months of work, because they didn't need us
anymore. There were about 500 of us and we were very angry. Some brand new cars
standing in the yard got scratched. At the same time, it was clear that the
human resources department would ask us sooner or later to come back to work.
We discussed this and when they called us the following month, we told them
collectively that we will only start working again if they give us unlimited
contracts. It worked.
Strike
in the legal framework
In 2003 there was already a wildcat strike in Dacia
but it stopped after a few days. The activists were fired. We couldn't find
anybody who could tell us anything more specific about this particular
confrontation. Only one worker from the engine section remembers that the wildcat
strike was defeated because the workers did not coordinate themselves enough.
About the ongoing strike he says: Here the workers in one section have no idea
what the workers in the other sections are doing or deciding on!"
In order for the strike not to be declared illegal and
thus stopped by court order, the trade union has to make sure that the striking
workers stick to certain rules. For example, striking workers are not allowed
to move between the production sections. Everybody has to remain at his/her
work place, with the difference that nobody works. It is also forbidden to
stage actions outside the production halls or in front of the factory gate.
Constantin told us that at the beginning they had an idea to blockade the
entrance for transporters, so that even the products that were ready before the
strike started could not leave the factory, but the majority agreed that the
strike should not leave the legal framework.
In spite of the inspiring determination we found among
the workers this strike has its limits. There is a lack of co-ordination
between the workers and a lack of collective actions with which they could
increase pressure. The decision processes are taking place within the
hierarchical framework of trade union structures and the striking workers
depend on the union's information channels. Striking workers told us various
times that during similar strikes in France things break and there is sabotage.
They also asked what it looks like where we are from. The idea of undertaking such
kind of activities seem to be present in the minds of some workers but in the
end they are not being put into action.
Toiling right through the
weekends
We are not giving up!
was still the common message of the union leaders on the stage and of the
shouting choirs of striking workers, accompanied by whistles and drums, at the
second large rally since the strike began, which took place on Thursday, the
18th day of the strike.
On the next morning, Friday April 11, the 19th day of
the strike, there was confusion. There was a new offer, not much better than
the previous one, in some points even worse and anyway far from the demands of
the striking workers. It consisted of a 300 RON wage increase starting from
January 2008 (thus including back payments) and another 60 RON more from
September 2008; additionally, there was to be a single bonus as part of the
profit of 2007, consisting of one month's pay, assured to be at least 900 RON.
On average that amounted to a 30-40 percent wage increase. Unskilled workers
(cleaners) and TESA functionaries (these sectors were not on strike) would get
a 15 per cent wage increase.
At 1pm the union signed the agreement and declared the
strike to be over. The press was told that 70 percent of the striking workers
voted to accept the new offer. Nobody knew where this number came from.
Certainly there was no written vote at this time and many of the striking
workers didn't take part in the voting. Numerous buses arrived with workers
from the surrounding areas for the second shift in the afternoon (whose only
means of getting to the factory is the bus), by which time the decision had
already been made. The regional newspaper Societatea
wrote the next day: Many of the striking workers were unhappy with the
decision to end the strike. There were some very tense moments. Many of the
strikers started booing the union leaders. The mood at shift-change
was low on this day, nobody gave the impression of having won a struggle. Many
believe that the union leadership was bribed and betrayed the strikers. One
woman from the morning shift asked us if we knew whether they could take their
own functionaries to court. We discussed how the struggle could be continued.
Rodica was laughing when we talked about the option to take a collective
extended sickie. Oh, I understand what you mean. But we are still
scared to do such things. There would have to be some changes in our mentality
before we could do something like that..
Shortly after the end of the strike the workers were
told in an assembly that they would have to work weekends to make up for the
losses incurred by the strike.
How and if management will be able to enforce this
remained unclear. The plan to introduce a four shift system with weekends
production continued was withdrawn during the strike. The mere thought of only
one weekend off in a month created serious anger amongst the workers.
Another
strike!
The strike at Dacia had only just ended but on April
14, 2008 there is information about a strike of 3000 workers in the steel plant
of ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel producer, in Galati, Romania.
There are 13000 workers employed at the steel plant.
In the early hours, 700 of the strikers wanted to enter the factory through the
main gate but were stopped by security guards who also started to film the
striking workers. In response there was a riot in front of the main entrance to
the factory. Stones and bottles were thrown. One of the guard points got
smashed. The Solidaritate, one of the four trade unions operating at
ArcelorMittal, had refused to sign the labour contract. They actually demanded
that wages be doubled, but minimum increase should be 25 per cent. The
management of the steel plant only offered a 9.5 percent wage rise. Because of
the strike some workplaces were not covered, management said they could not
guarantee safety at the ovens, there was danger of an explosion. In order not
to have to switch off the ovens and to avoid stopping production, management
went to court and demanded an injunction to halt the strike. On Tuesday, April
15, the court ruled in their favour: the strike was declared illegal and had to
be stopped immediately because of the danger to people in and around the
factory. Solidaritate
ended the strike. Further negotiations are pending.