BDZ strike will only hurt the company - Transport Minister

In the case of an effective strike by the Bulgarian state railways company, BDZ extra coaches will be made available to cope with passenger demand, Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov told the Bulgarian news agency on March 9 2011.

BDZ and the National Railroad Infrastructure Company (NRIC) are planning to stage a "warning strike" on March 10 and then launch effective strikes starting on March 11 from 8am until 4pm.

The strike decision is triggered by planned job cuts at the railways, which was one of the conditions for obtaining a 600 million leva loan from the World Bank, aimed at overhauling the sector.

But, according to Tsvetkov, should the strike go ahead, the only victims will be the protesters themselves and not the passengers, as there will be alternative measures to cope with the problem, while BDZ will be "losing revenue".

Employees of BDZ threatened to go on effective strike starting March 11 2011, as announced by the heads of the two major Bulgarian labour unions, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions and Podkrepa during a meeting on February 21 with BDZ union leaders.

Subsequently however, on March 6, BDZ said they were contemplating the option of scrapping the strike, if trade unions are given guarantees of investments in the sector over the next four years from the country's Prime Minister Boiko Borissov and Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov, a trade union representative said.

"If we receive such guarantees, we will surely head to an agreement, which, however, does not mean that there will be no strike," Plamen Dimitrov, vice president of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), told Bulgarian National Radio (BNR).