Days of protests at the Damen Mangalia Shipyard. Where negotiations get stuck VIDEO

The 1,500 employees of Damen Shipyards Mangalia (DSMa) have been protesting for several days and are asking the management for salaries to be linked to the rate of inflation. Although negotiations began in December 2022, no agreement was reached.

The Free Navalist Union (SLN) requests that people’s salaries increase in line with the inflation rate, as it is officially transmitted by the National Institute of Statistics. This would result in an increase of 385 lei.

Instead, the management of the construction site claims that the wage increase can only be 100 lei gross, to which an aid of 225 lei can be added for four months. The directorate cites the not very good economic situation and the fact that they have few orders. However, their offer is rejected by the employees.

Negotiations between the union and management began in December 2022, but did not lead to any results. The wide gap between what employees are asking for and what management is offering has led the discussion to an impasse. Meanwhile, the fifth protest by Damen staff takes place on Tuesday 10 January.

SLN claims that it called the meeting of the Parity Commission repeatedly, but Damen’s management did not show up, refusing to negotiate, which is why there is also a lawsuit pending. After several insistences, the DSMa directorate authorized the members of the Parity Commission to participate in the resumption of collective negotiations, and the first meeting took place on December 15, 2022.

Negotiations without any result

Thus, between December 15, 2022 and December 22, 2022, three negotiation meetings took place, during which SLN presented data on inflation and the evolution of consumer prices, published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS). According to them, the annual rate of inflation in November 2022 compared to November 2021 was 16.8%, the level of inflation increased a lot compared to the forecast for 2022.

Consequently, SLN proposed granting a salary increase that would represent the difference between the current level of inflation and what the salary increase granted in April 2022 represented. The result was a difference of 385 lei, an amount that coincided with SLN’s initial proposal for an increase of salaries starting January 1, 2023.

The request of the trade unionists was not accepted by the management of the company, which, instead, came up with the proposal that salaries increase by 100 gross lei, and that each employee receive a compensation for utilities in the gross value of 225 lei, applicable during December 2022 – March 2023 (four months).

However, the company’s administration sent, say the trade unionists, on December 23, 2022, a communication to all employees in which it referred to an agreement concluded as early as May 2022, which talks about an increase in the basic gross salary by 100 lei , starting from January 1, 2023.

“The administration tends to confuse an unagreed proposal with an agreement. If there had been such an agreement, it would have been explicitly recorded both in the minutes and in the additional act to the CCMSLN transmits.

The last proposal of the trade unionists was a salary increase of 265 lei, a proposal with which the administration did not agree.

Spontaneous protests

After the New Year, the Joint Commission of DSMa did not meet again because the representatives of the company’s administration did not come to the dialogue citing objective reasons.

On January 4th, the employees who were at work at that time organized a spontaneous protest during the lunch break, and since then, every day there has been a protest, demanding a dialogue and an increase in wages.

“Although during the collective negotiations the Administration invoked the fact that it could not grant a higher salary increase due to the negative financial results and the low number of orders, it nevertheless unilaterally granted bonuses worth 2,300 NET lei to only a certain number of employees without inform us about this decision, which we learned about from the employees”, says Laurenţiu Gobeajă, SLN president.

He shows that the employees do not know the financial situation of the company or details related to the orders and their value, but they suspect that the Naval Shipyard is intentionally kept at a loss, and the Romanian state (majority shareholder with 51%) does nothing.

Finally, the administration announced that on January 13, the Joint Commission would meet again to discuss the demands of the employees. Meanwhile, the unionists managed to get an online meeting with Damen management in the Netherlands.