"HOT" AUTUMN FOR THE GOVERNMENT: General strike on October 5th!

• 800,000 public sector workers will attend the meeting

• Boc: "Strangely enough, the fact that everyone is unhappy shows the law is good!"

Unhappy with the final draft of the unified wage law, public sector workers, teachers, healthcare and administration workers, yesterday announced, through their unionists, a general strike for October 5th.

Unions estimate that 800,000 people will attend the demonstrations. The former are first expected on September 15th, to picket the headquarters of the Parliament.

Upon hearing this news, Prime-Minister Emil Boc yesterday summoned the Minister of Finance, Gheorghe Pogea, and the Minister of Labor, Marian Sârbu, to discuss the claims of the demonstrators. Union leaders warned that these protests are just the beginning.

• Public sector workers united against the Government

The protests were announced at the end of a meeting between the leaders of the various union confederations, who agreed on the creation of an Alliance of public sector workers, with the unified goal of renegotiating the law of public sector wages.

The leader of the education unions, Aurel Cornea, explained: "The goal of these protests is to prevent the Government from taking responsibility before the Parliament for the current draft of the law of unified wages.

We want the renegotiation of the law of unified wages for all public sector workers, in order to have it account for all the principles that we all agreed upon a few months ago.

This means preventing layoffs and preventing mandatory unpaid holidays this year".

• Unions will boycott the elections

Also, as a sign of protest, unionists intend to boycott the presidential elections of November 22nd. The leader of the National Union Block, Dumitru Costin, considers that "the Boc government is incapable of handling political decisions" and proves "lost in the face of the country"s economic decline".

The leader of the National Union Confederation Cartel ALFA, yesterday announced, in a communique, that his organization will call for a vote of no confidence of the parliament against the Government.

• Boc: The Government tried very hard to have a dialogue with the society

Strangely enough, Prime-Minister Emil Boc, leader of the PD-L, feels that the fact that all public sector workers are unhappy with the unified wage law, is the best proof that the law actually did its job. "Perhaps the paradox that there is this general discontent with this law proves that it is a good law", said Emil Boc, in answering the question if there were members of any profession were happy with the new law, Agerpres said.

The Prime-Minister said that the Executive did "considerable efforts" concerning the social dialogue and says that "the money available for salaries is particularly limited".

"We followed the European regulations, we eliminated the privileges in the system, we eliminated the discrepancies and we are drafting a law that is fair and decent", said Prime-Minister Emil Boc

Geoană: The protests could have been avoided

The leader of the Senate, chairman of the Social Democratic Party, Mircea Geoană feels that the protests could have been avoided by holding a debate of the Parliament on the laws that the Government wants to take full responsibility for.

"At this moment, I think the current situation is the result of the fact that such debates didn"t happen", said Geoană.

He said he hoped that the IMF will accept "the solution that the current circumstances require", namely "keeping the methodology for calculating the ratio between the minimum wage and the maximum wage in the public central administration" and also that the current method for calculating pensions will remain unchanged.