Lupeni Strike of 1929

The Lupeni strike of 1929 took place on 5 and 6 August 1929 in the mining town of Lupeni, in the Jiu Valley of Transylvania, Romania.

Near the end of 1928, miners' leaders in the Jiu Valley had begun agitating for an extension of their collective work contract. Their demands included (in conformity with new legislation adopted under international pressure) an eight-hour workday, a 40% raise for those who worked at furnaces and in pits, the provision of food and boots, and an end to children working underground. The two sides could not reach an agreement. A trial ensued, and as the ruling of a court in Deva was not to the miners' liking, they appealed to the High Court of Cassation and Justice.

Also during 1928, the Lupeni miners had organised themselves into an independent union, led by Teodor Munteanu and a certain Moldoveanu. The union was not communist. Its leaders were closely aligned with the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), which wished to strengthen its relations with workers. (After the strike, the opposition press asserted that the union had very close links with the PNȚ and that its members had taken part in a large electoral demonstration in Alba Iulia in May 1928.) During the first months of labour agitation, the union asked members to await the high court's ruling. However, communist agitators were active in the spring of 1929 in the Jiu Valley, and the workers grew increasingly desperate as their conditions failed to improve and the court's ruling was delayed.

On the morning of 5 August, following a decision by the mine owners not to allow the union to pay each employee a days' wages from its own funds, some 200 workers met and decided to strike. About 3,000 men from the Elena and Victoria mines went on strike, going together to the Carolina and Ștefan mines. The situation quickly spun out of control, and the union leaders told the Deva authorities that they were no longer responsible for their members' actions.

The strikers then decided to occupy the power station controlling the mines' pumping machinery. A radical group went inside, forcing the men there to stop their work, endangering the lives of 200 miners still underground (who had refused to join the strike) and causing a power outage for the entire Jiu Valley. The engineer Radu Nicolau, the power station's manager, told to leave his station, was stabbed when he refused and had to be hospitalised. The other power station employees were forcibly evicted and the guard beaten.

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