The Damen Group is asking for the bankruptcy of the Mangalia Shipyard

The Damen Mangalia Shipyard (DSMa) will be forced to lay off approximately 1,000 people, after the Dutch group Damen asked the Constanţa Court to declare the offshore production capacity bankrupt, a fact we drew attention to a month ago and a half in the pages of the BURSA Newspaper that it is possible to happen, due to the lack of necessary measures from the Ministry of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, a ministry that did not bother to answer the questions I asked at the beginning of April. Political sources, close to the government, later told us that the blame for the situation in which the Damen Mangalia Naval Shipyard is located would not lie with the Minister Radu-Ştefan Oprea, but with former Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who told his party colleague not to make any decision regarding the economic unit without receiving approval from the head of the Government.

It is certain that the Dutch from Damen are tired of waiting for the Ciolacu government to unblock the situation at the Mangalia construction site and, on May 26, they registered with the Constanţa Tribunal the opening of bankruptcy proceedings for the economic unit, at the request of the creditor, a procedure that constitutes the subject of file number 3688/118/2024. As a result of this action, the employees of the Mangalia Naval Shipyard received a notification the other day by which they are informed that from June they will enter technical unemployment, due to the fact that the economic agent no longer has projects in the works.

The notice said: "We are now reaching a situation where further delay in the introduction of technical unemployment is no longer feasible. This is a difficult decision that we had to make in order to give our site the best chance to overcome this difficult situation and ensure its restart in the future. Technical unemployment is to be introduced starting from 03.06.2024".

Regarding the debts that the Mangalia Construction Site has to the Damen group, it is about "approximately 160 million euros, which represents the due loans that Damen granted to the company from the time of taking over the shares, from 2018, until now ", according to Laurentiu Gobeajă, president of the Free Navalistul Trade Union.

The representatives of the Free Navalist Union met on Tuesday, May 28, with the Shipyard Administration to discuss this issue. Laurentiu Gobeajă emphasized that, although there were numerous attempts to negotiate new contracts, none of them materialized. Despite these difficulties, work will continue for those working on existing projects, including in the ship repair area, Industrial Solutions and Neodrill, which represents approximately 200 employees. Following the discussions, the representatives of the negotiation commissions from the DSMa Administration and the "Navalistul" Free Trade Union agreed on the extension of the validity of the collective labor agreement until March 31, 2025, the modification of the salary scale, by including the seniority increase and the HSE bonus in the salary of gross basis, the granting of a seniority compensation of 3% for employees with less than 25% seniority increase on May 31, 2024, a salary increase of 200 lei gross starting from June 1, 2024, the increase of the delegation allowance from 60 lei /day to 100 lei net/day and the increase of the retirement allowance from two to three gross basic salaries.

Regarding employees entering technical unemployment, the Labor Code shows that this measure involves the suspension of the individual employment contract at the initiative of the employer, and employees will receive an allowance of 75% of the basic salary if they remain at the employer's disposal at home or 100% if I stay at the employer's premises. The period of technical unemployment will be taken into account when calculating the contribution period. Employees retain their status as insured in the public pension and health system. During technical unemployment, employees can work at other units with partial or full-time CIM.

We remind you that last month Damen sued the Romanian state at the International Court of Arbitration in Vienna and demands the termination of the 2018 association agreement by which the Romanian state became the majority shareholder of Damen Shipyards Mangalia SA. The Mangalia Naval Shipyard is co-owned - as I showed in the BURSA newspaper - by the Romanian state, through the Ministry of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, which, through a company listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, on the AeRO market, owns 51% of the shares , and by the Dutch company Damen, which has the remaining 49% of the shares.