Traian Preoteasa wants peace at CFR Călători: the disciplinary councils, dominated by management representatives

The management of CFR Călători will have three of the five members of the Disciplinary Council, which will judge the appeals of the railway staff to the sanctions applied, according to the future operating regulations, cited by the Club Feroviar website.

Traian Preoteasa, the general director of CFR Călători, sent, according to the quoted source, the last few days to the two representative unions for the company - the National Railway Federation Mişcare Comercial Vagoane and the Alliance of Railway Technical Federations - the final form of the Regulation on the operation of the central and regional Disciplinary Councils , whose purpose is "to establish and transparently treat the violations and disciplinary sanctions provided for in the Labor Code, for all professional categories within SNTFC Călători".

That document provides that employees who are subject to a preliminary disciplinary investigation and believe that their rights have been violated regarding the formulation and support of the defense and the evidence they consider necessary in their defense may address the Disciplinary Council within a period of seven days worker from the completion of the preliminary disciplinary investigation, respectively from the date on which she participated in the summons for the preliminary disciplinary investigation.

The investigation of employees by the Councils will be done in compliance with principles such as the presumption of innocence, the guarantee of the right to defense, adversariality (the right to speak about any act or fact related to the misconduct), proportionality, the legality of the sanction, the uniqueness of the sanction (a single sanction for a fact) and speed.

What is striking is the fact that the administration of the CFR Călători company will have three of the five members, which makes judging the appeal a formality. Two of the members are representatives of the unions, and three are the representative of the legal structure of the company, the representative of the management structure and the representative of the specialized structure. Practically, the role of the members from the trade unions becomes a decorative one, as long as the decisions will be taken with the reasoned vote of three members.

"It is not the first bizarre decision of director Traian Preoteasa. He said he would implement the railway staff status law, but created a single basic salary for all executive positions, whether we are talking about the driver or the engine driver. The priestess managed to do what the communist regime failed to do: single basic salary for all employees. The general director of CFR Călători has his own interpretation of the legislation in force, because apart from the respective salary, he also blocked the promotion system. Now he is probably afraid of protests and that is why he has decided what the composition of the disciplinary boards will look like, to ensure that the employees will respect his decisions. You realize that, with three members out of five in each disciplinary council, Traian Preoteasa will have a free hand to dismiss or sanction the inconvenient employees, decisions that she has been making until now, but less often, because she is not falls within the provisions of the law", Gabriel Rodrigo Maxim, president of the Federation of Railway Transporters' Unions in Romania (FSTFR), declared for the BURSA newspaper, a federation in which many of the locomotive mechanics from CFR Călători are members.

The problems at the CFR Călători company were also reported the other day by the National Railway Federation of Commercial Wagon Movement, which announced that on September 15, 2023, it will launch a warning strike at the railway, between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Among the reasons for the warning strike is the fact that "there is no solid investment plan regarding the complete replacement of the fleet of locomotives and wagons with which CFR Călători works today".

In relation to this protest movement, Rodrigo Maxim, the president of the FSTFR, stated to us that it is legal, as long as from May 26, 2023 the National Railway Federation Commercial Movement of Wagons no longer has a Collective Labor Agreement.

The President of the FSTFR also told us that, regarding the members of the trade union federation he leads, they cannot join the warning strike of colleagues from the FNFMCV, because the collective labor agreement is valid until December 31, 2023.