Social dialogue during the economic crisis: the survival of collective bargaining in the manufacturing sector in Romania

In their seminal book on the models of eastern European capitalism, Bohle and Greskovits (2012) argue that Romania has a special type of neoliberal society with weak state institutions, a high degree of centralisation and collective bargaining coverage and relatively high mobilisation power on the part of the trade unions. Before the 2008 crisis, Romania had a comprehensive system of industrial relations with widespread collective bargaining at national, sectoral and establishment levels. The legal system supported the development of bipartite and tripartite consultation and negotiation between trade unions, employers and the government (Trif 2010). However, this system was radically altered by the government after the crisis, despite opposition from trade unions and the largest employers’ associations (Ciutacu 2012). The legal changes led to the implosion of trade unions’ fundamental rights to bargain collectively, to form trade unions and to take industrial action. As a result, cross-sectoral collective agreements ceased to exist and very few multi-employer collective agreements were concluded after the new labour code was adopted in 2011. The crisis was used as a pretext by the centre-right government to reform the industrial relations system, with the support of the ‘Troika’, comprising the European Union (EU), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB)