SLOMR

The union Sindicatul Liber al Oamenilor Muncii din România ( SLOMR, German Free Trade Union of Workers of Romania) was founded in February 1979 in protest against the pervasive control by the Romanian Communist Party in the former Socialist Republic of Romania. She grew up within four weeks on a number of members of 2400 at, but was within the next three months by the Securitate smashed.

One years, the events were taking place before the establishment of the Polish Solidarity trade union.

History

In January 1979, a group of fifteen workers from shipyards Drobeta Turnu Severin harbor on the Danube came with the proposal approach to form a union to the doctor and intellectuals Ionel Cană. Cană, who had already assisted the workers in the preparation of petitions to complain about the prevailing working conditions, agreed to the request.

The founding declaration was signed by 20 people. The statement included the names, occupations and addresses of the 20 founding members. Herein was further stated that the organization was incorporated under the Romanian law and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions is affiliated. It has also been on the decline in labor - pointed and living conditions as well as the limitations in the expression and the Represented interests of the workers. It was also mentioned in the document that behind the new union no political forces would be available, but that it would go to their representatives to securing justice in social areas and their work.

In the new union program included the fight against unemployment, for better working conditions, workplace safety in factories, for an increase in the subsistence and pension payments as well as a shortening of the working week and a minimization of unpaid overtime. The union was convinced of its legality and demanded an open dialogue with the public authorities about these claims.

Soon, around 2,400 workers from various cities of the country such as Bucharest, Ploiesti, Constanta, Târgu Mureş and Timişoara joined the new workers' representation that their program appropriate by claims such as freedom for all working people, including the farmers, free choice of employment, the right to wages for the farmers as well as the right to free sale of their products and an end to terror and internment in psychiatric hospitals for those who demanded respect for their rights.

The Romanian orthoxe priest and dissident Gheorghe calciu - Dumitreasa seemed to be a pastor. The union was also supported by the writer and dissident Paul Goma. An additional manifesto was published which called for the legalization of non-state unions and the right to join them.

On 4 March 1979, the founding declaration of Noël Bernard Radio Free Europe was read.

Suppression

The SLOMR - creation and its constituent declaration were promptly answered with a wave of repression against the organization and its members. There was extensive detentions, involuntary admissions to mental hospitals, exile, systematic harassment, beatings, and abbreviated trial and imprisonment of the founders and the leading members. Ion Cană was sentenced to seven years in prison for "spreading propaganda fascist ", but was already released in 1980.

The remaining members of the SLOMR protested in April in an open letter to Nicolae Ceauşescu against the arrests of its members. Canas 's successor as president of the union, Nicolae Dascălu, was sentenced in June for allegedly leaking state secrets to Amnesty International to 18 months in prison.

After personal interviews with Dascălu and other dissidents in Bucharest Carl Gibson, Erwin Ludwig, Fenelon Sacerdoţeanu and 20 other people set up a regional office of the SLOMR in Timişoara. Gibson and Ludwig were arrested on April 4, due to the establishment of an anarchist organization and sentenced to six months in prison.

More 153 trade union leaders, including Virgil sponding from Sighisoara, were arrested as " social parasites and hooligans " and placed under house arrest, admitted to psychiatric hospitals, deported, imprisoned and deported to sit out the punishment from the country.

Some trade unionists signing statements was required, who denied the existence of the SLOMR.

At the same time, the authorities began a campaign of slander and dire threats to rub out with the aim of the union. Carl Gibson, who began to emigrate to the Federal Republic of Germany immediately after release from prison, has been speaker of the SLOMR in the Western world. Together with a group of Romanian dissidents in France and Switzerland, he informed the World Confederation of Labour in Brussels and the International Labour Organization of the United Nations Convention on the suppression of the free trade union movement and the human rights violations in Romania. After the hearings, the group filed complaints with both agencies of the government in Bucharest.

After the arrest of the original leaders now took over the organization of the other union, but also this one months were later arrested, and the remaining members were target permanent harassment. In her last and successful attempt at the end to destroy the union took the regime several hundred union members at the same time firmly in all parts of the country. The government pretended to have no knowledge of a new union in Romania.

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