On Monday, 8 September, the new school year began in Romania. Teachers boycotted the usual opening ceremonies and took to the streets instead, protesting new austerity measures being introduced by the government. Up to 10,000 teachers, joined by pupils and other workers, protested in Bucharest, with smaller protests taking place in other towns and cities. These protests were preceded by a picket in Cluj on 4 September. Anger is high and there is the possibility of strike action this school term – a demand on the union leaders that was prominent on the protests. CWI members joined the protests in Bucharest and Marosvásárhely/Târgu Mureș, as well as the picket in Cluj. Below is an English translation of the leaflet distributed.
Strikes are the only solution! For a united workers’ movement to defend wages!
It is no secret that the new government wants to make the working class majority pay for the budget crisis. Instead of taxing the rich further than the meagre 4% that they have to pay now, they sacrifice wages, pensions, scholarships, etc., while refusing even the limited measure to introduce progressive taxation. In the case of the healthcare sector, almost half of the budget goes into the pockets of the profit-driven private healthcare bosses, while complaining that the workers get too much social aid.
Union militants correctly saw behind the fake promises of Ilie Bolojan’s [the prime minister] austerity government even before they took power [in June 2025], protesting against the promises of cuts that they openly declared. The cowardly education minister, Daniel David, pushed for anti-worker laws – class merges, wage freezes, scholarship cuts, rising the number of hours for teachers etc. – during the summer, when the education workers cannot go on strike.
It was clear however that once summer ended, strikes that could go further than those of 2023 would start. With the education unions demanding the resignation of education minister Daniel David for weeks now, that reality is closer than ever. In preparation for this, the education unions announced they will gather signatures to repeal the austerity law in education, nicknamed the “Bolojan Law”. This could be more than just a petition, it could be the seeds of an alternative to the current politicians, showing that the unions can be a tool for workers to challenge any laws hostile towards the working class, and even push for laws that would make workers’ lives better.
No current political party can or even wants to stop the austerity offensive led by the liberals. Both the right-populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and the right-populist politician Călin Georgescu both promised towards the end of the 2025 presidential campaign to reduce “budget waste”, in the same way the liberals did. George Simion, the AUR presidential candidate, promised to fire half a million state workers. Even now, from the opposition, they care more about Romanian businesses then the lives of working class people and students.
The only real force of opposition against these attacks is the organised working class. Street protests, like today’s can be an important first step, but we need more than that, we need strikes. And for the strikes not to be defeated, like the ones in 2023, we need to learn from that experience. The strikes need to be united across as many sectors as possible, both state and private. To avoid betrayals, strikes need to be under the control of the trade union members taking action, including the decision on when to strike, for how long, and how to organise pickets and other supporting actions.
The protests are only the beginning of a new strike wave. In 2023 we saw that the actions that hurt “the System”, that is the employer class and their politicians, are the ones that hurt their weak point, their pockets. As workers, we have the power to put all of the economy on hold until the demands of the majority are met. When we fight, we can win!
The CWI supporters propose:
- Transparent negotiations! Delegates that take part in negotiations should be recalled at any point, and held accountable to report back to the workplace meetings
- The immediate building of strike funds controlled directly and democratically by workers, using union resources and donations from other groups of workers to support the struggle. In 2023, when laws were changed to prevent strikers from being paid, the right to protest through striking was threatened. This shows that strikes are not to “get the attention” of bosses and the bourgeois governments, as they are in open struggle with us. We need to defend our right to strike, and add the return of payments for the time spent striking on the union’s list of demands
- Unite with protests across sectors! It is clear that a joint struggle of workers can make a strike unstoppable, which is why bosses and politicians try to divide and defeat them one by one. If union leaders do not do this, the task should be taken up by the workers themselves, participating together in each other’s picket lines and forming joint councils to coordinate the strike.
- The education strikes in 2023 showed us that in order to prevent betrayals from above, we need to organise from below. We need regular discussion with our workmates about how to move forward the struggle, and make sure that the process of making decisions at the workplace level is a collective one.
- For militant/fighting, democratic and worker-controlled unions! Fight against careerism and bureaucratism! For a victory against the current austerity government and for a continued fight for better conditions in the future, we need strong unions. To take back the unions as tools for struggle, union representatives should be able to be recalled at any time, and their wage shouldn’t be higher than the average wage of the worker in that trade!
- The initiative started by the education unions to raise signatures for removing the austerity law shows a way forward. The unions should represent workers’ interests even when it comes to attacking anti-worker legislation, not just in the workplace, but in the “legislative arena “ as well. We need to support the petition against the “Bolojan Law” that affects education, and fight for the unions to advance other such petitions in all sectors attacked by the austerity measures.
- This can go even further! Following this example, the unions could fight for positive change by starting and supporting law proposals that would do more than defend the working class, but actively ask for better pay, higher pensions, scholarships, etc. and higher taxes for the rich to pay for it all.
- Even if changes like these could be pushed by the united unions, this could be attacked by anti-union legislation and other such intimidation from above. In order to defend and advance the working class movement, and fight for all the needs of the workers, the unions could call for and build a new party of the working class. Such a party, organised democratically should fight for more than our economic condition, standing against war, violence against women and other vulnerable people in and outside of the workplace, housing for everyone, etc.
- The strikes show how it is the workers, not bosses, state and private alike, that know what is best for the industry they work in, so they should decide how every workplace, and the broader economy is run! Key sectors of the economy must be taken out of the hands of the private profiteers, and run democratically by workers We need a society ruled by the needs of the majority, not for the profit of the few!
- For a socialist alternative to the current global capitalist crisis of poverty and war. The rank-and-file union membership fight against conservative bureaucracies and for militantly-led, democratic and worker-controlled unions willing to fight for workers’ interests is a worldwide phenomenon. The Committee for a Workers’ International is fighting all over the world to build the unions as militant organisations for the advancement of the working class movement that can win the struggle for such a society. Join us and let’s build the CWI together!