Bucharest's Public Transport To Follow Regular Workday Schedule Monday

The Bucharest subway and public transport network will follow the regular workday schedule on Monday.

However, subway transport will not be available Tuesday, from 4:00 A.M. to 4 P.M..

Bucharest's mayor Sorin Oprescu said Friday, after talks with RATB unionists, that 80%-85% of the city's public transport vehicles will be available Tuesday, when all subway unionists and some public transportation unionists are set to go on a solidarity strike.

Public transport union leader Mircea Ionescu also said Friday that 50% of Bucharest's 537 trams and trolleys will function on June 1.

"We decided not to go on solidarity strike as the austerity measures announced by the Government don't affect us," said Ionescu, adding the 1,000 buses that ensure public transportation in Bucharest will also function on June 1.

Bucharest public transport authority RATB has 11 unions with about 11,800 members, and only one union wants to go on strike on June 1, in solidarity with other public sector employees, highlighted Ionescu.

Subway union leader Ioan Radoi announced early Friday that Romanian subway and Bucharest public transport unionists will go on strike on June 1, between 4 a.m. and 4 p.m., in solidarity with other public sector employees, but may extend the strike indefinitely in protest to planned wage cuts.

Romania's Government will seek a confidence vote in Parliament to adopt two laws lowering public sector wages and cutting pensions, in a move to bring the budget deficit to 6.8% of GDP under the terms of a EUR20 billion IMF-led rescue loan agreed last year.

About half a million state employees in schools and public institutions go on strike indefinitely as of Monday and other state employees in healthcare, transports the penitentiary system, and even some in the private sector, will strike out of solidarity.

According to unionists, at least one million employees will go on strike on May 31 and June 1.

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