This time, in order to survive, the companies faced with financial difficulties will no longer resort to temporary redundancies, (which means paying the contribution to the social security budget from their own money), but choose to make redundancies. As many as 180 thousand employees in the private industrial sector and 20 thousand others working for public-private companies might find themselves in this difficult situation as of February the 1st, because economic sectors like civil engineering, the steel, chemical and petrochemical industry, the car making industry and the leather and textile industry, faced with a prolonged economic crisis, will have no choice but resort to redundancies.

Quite predictable, trade unions threaten with protests. The leader of the Cartel Alfa trade union confederation, Bogdan Hossu, has announced that people are going to take to the street as early as next week, when they plan to picket the Finance Ministry. According to Hossu, even more state employees might be made redundant this year, except for those 100 thousand already announced, in such fields like education, social assistance, local administration and rail industry.

The trade union leader argues that the Finance Ministry is approaching the problem only from a financial perspective, which has nothing to do with increasing efficiency. The unemployment rate in Romania currently stands at 7.8% and most people find it hard to believe that the 7.3% target, set by the Government, will be reached. Nevertheless, the head of the National Employment Agency, Silviu Bian, is optimistic about it. He believes that the number of unemployed people will be lower than initially forecast, and says that the job offer has considerably increased in the last moth:

‘’I believe they stand maximum chances to succeed. If you take a look at the last year’s average in Romania, you will see that we constantly had 11 thousand vacant jobs every month.’’

A survey conducted by a recruitment website shows that 33% of Romanians are expecting to be affected by the planned redundancies while 12% of them believe their salary will be slashed.