Part of the employees of Romanian state-owned railway company CFR SA have spontaneously stopped working on Wednesday morning, March 22. Their spontaneous strike seriously affected the rail transport in Romania.

At 10:00, some 140 trains were registering delays of dozens of minutes or were blocked in train stations, among them the Bucharest-Vienna international train, according to the local media.

The employees decided to stop working because their collective labor agreement had expired. Marius Muresan, the regional union leader in Cluj, told local Digi24 that the employees are upset that the contract ended, and that they failed to reach an agreement in the 45 days they had for negotiations with CFR.

CFR SA also announced in a statement that, starting 07:00, part of the railway employees have spontaneously stopped working, which has affected the railway traffic.

“This protest comes as the management and the representative trade unions are negotiating the new 2017-2018 collective labor agreement, negotiations during which the CFR SA management announced that the company’s budget for 2017 included an increase of 22.5% in the salary fund, a growth that, following negotiations, will be found in the employees’ wages,” reads the statement from CFR SA.

The company also announced that a new round of negotiations will start today at 15:00. Moreover, CFR SA pointed out that this form of protest “violates the legal procedures, causes severe damages to the company, which records financial losses, and affects the passengers who already bought tickets for CFR trains.”

State-owned railway passenger carrier CFR Calatori announced that those who want to give up the trip could ask to get back the money they paid for the tickets.

Passengers can find information on the trains here (by typing the train number in the box), or by calling CFR train stations. Those who depart from Bucharest’s North Train Station can see the timetable live here.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com