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24 February, 2003Workers had to down tools in order to obtain a wage agreement.
ROMANIA: Strike action was necessary to obtain an agreement on wages at the Electrolux plant in Satu Mare, in northwestern Romania.
When the Samus Electrolux Union, a member of the IMF-affiliated National Metalworkers' Federation of Romania (U-Metal), experienced difficulties in its wage talks with the local management of Electrolux in January, workers downed their tools for about a week and a half. The union said that management had not been negotiating in good faith and had been unwilling to compromise to find a solution to the deadlock.
Following the strike action, which began on January 31 and lasted 10 days, an agreement could finally be reached.
When first informed by U-Metal of the conflict in negotiations, the IMF wrote to Hans Stråberg, president and CEO of Electrolux, at corporate headquarters in Sweden, to ask for his intervention so that a solution acceptable to both sides could be found.