International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Jiu Valley miners of Romania have participated in among Eastern Europe's most powerful labor strikes throughout the twentieth century. Labor strife has appeared under both private ownership and state control. The first major conflict began when the mines were under private control in the summer of 1929, when workers from Lupeni went on strike demanding shorter workdays and higher salaries. A radical group of miners occupied the power station controlling the mines' pumping machinery, threatening to flood the mines. The authorities sent in troops to restart the power station and break the strike; in the ensuing confrontation between the soldiers and the miners, approximately 22 miners were killed and 58 wounded by government forces. After World War II, when the Communist Party took political power over Romania, the mines were nationalized and transformed into joint soviet-Romanian companies (sovroms). After 1965, the mines were intensively exploited as a means of paying off the country's foreign debt. Under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, while the Jiu Valley region underwent dramatic industrialization and development, miners' working conditions remained harsh and strenuous. Protesting conditions and eroding wages, in August 1977 miners in the Jiu Valley staged a major strike. More than 30,000 miners gathered in the main yard of the Lupeni mine protesting a state decree raising the ... log in or subscribe to read full text