Around 200 employees of the Romanian Society of Radio and Television (SRTv) gathered on yesterday and today (October 9 ), in the courtyard of the institution to protest against the dismissals at TVR, where 872 positions will be terminated. With protests ongoing, the Romanian Parliament is currently reviewing candidates for the SRTV board of directors, and will vote later on during the afternoon.  The protesters were promised the dismissals process will be suspended, at least until after new board of directors is named.

The protesters say that they are not protesting against changes or restructuring, which they believe is needed, but only the way in which it is being carried out. "We have a restructuring plan but they didn’t take it seriously nor consider our point of view”, said the representatives of the employees union of TVR (SPUS TV).

They said that during negotiations with the administration of TVR, union representatives had demanded that the number of posts to be cut in Romanian state and radio television parent company SRTv to be lower than the figure approved by a resolution in August. However, the management of Romanian Television has agreed to save only an extra 55 posts from the originally planned cuts. In the new organizational scheme 2,395 jobs will be kept and 872 positions cut.

Protesters also complain against the team who will review employees and who will decide on redundancies, saying many are too young and named on political reasons.

TVR leadership had to develop a strategy for restructuring the Romanian Television after, on June 27, the government adopted an emergency ordinance that TVR Board of Directors must approve within 45 days a program of economic recovery, including economic and employee restructuring, as well as paying the tax debt within six months.

On August 10, the Administrator Council of TVR adopted the report of the working group behind the Economic Recovery Program of Romanian television. The report recommended axing TVR Info and TVR Cultural, with TVR 2 to taking over cultural programming. The two tv stations were already closed down.

TVR needs seven and a half years to pay off its EUR 145 million debt, according to its new general manager, Claudiu Saftoiu, who was also nominated to continue leading TVR.

Ioana Toader, ioana.toader@romania-insider.com