Bucharest students react to the Dacia shock wave.

Bucharest, from our special correspondent.

In the lobby of the economic science building at the university in Bucharest, Alina, notebook in hand, takes advantage of a break to review her notes. At 23, this senior student doesn’t have much choice, judging from her schedule : in addition to her university classes, she holds down a full time job – 40 to 50 hours a week – as a financial analyst. Her income : 400 euros a month. Moreover, that’s why she decided to enroll in economic science : “Everybody says that the students in economic science have a better chance at landing a good job.”

Unhesitatingly on the side of the strikers.

In comparison, her mother, an engineer at Dacia in Pitesti with 25 years’ seniority, makes 300 euros a month. “She didn’t go on strike : at her age, it was too great a risk. If they were to fire her, she wouldn’t be able to find another job,” the young woman explained, who unhesitatingly sides with the strikers, to the point that she regrets that they did not hold out longer to obtain total satisfaction of their demands. “What’s more, the strike had just been declared to be legal... But, well, I think that the workers must have considered their situation after three weeks without wages, that amounts to a lot.”

The other students round about have made pretty much the same choices, and their language is similar. Diana, for example, a 20-year-old freshman in economic science, also chose this subject for “the money.” “My goal isn’t to become the boss of a company, but to work for myself and to make a lot of money for my family and to lead a comfortable life,” Diana explained, who, like many of her classmates, wanted at one point to go abroad.

She recently changed her mind. “It seems that it is very difficult to adapt and to find a job in France, and now, since Rumania joined the European Union, I tell myself that Rumania has a future.” But, of course, there isn’t a future for everybody. “Teachers and farm workers have a hard time making a living.” And there isn’t much of a future for “the majority of people with a university degree who are working at jobs that have nothing to do with their diplomas” and who, to her mind, sheds a very relative light on the figures that show unemployment falling.

But Diana also sees, from the luxury cars driving around town, that there is money and “a great capacity to consume.” Miruna, 19, who attends classes with her, shares her point of view. “I’m working at a call center, and by boss, a Frenchman, said that he decided to come and do business in Rumania when he saw a Lamborghini on the road to the airport.”

For the moment, she’s just a trainee at a job that has nothing to do with economic science, her day begins at the university at 9 in the morning and she gets off her job at midnight, but she is happy to be working for a multinational, a sign “of social climbing.” “When you see the factory workers who work hard, are skilled, and only make 900 lei a month, of which 700 go for food, it makes you think,” she said. “Today, there are lots of people in Rumania who go shopping in Bulgaria because it’s cheaper. Cooking oil is even cheaper in Italy than here !” She, too, is happy that the Dacia workers obtained a 40% pay hike after the three-week strike.

“Playing the Stock Market – I’d like that.”

“Those who come to Rumania and invest have the impression that wages don’t have to be paid,” Alina went on. “They don’t think that their workers are people who also need to feed their families.” She dreams of a career as a trader. “Playing the Stock Market – I’d like that, it’s a combination of luck and science, and all the same, it pays better than what I’m making now.” As to knowing whether there may be contradictions between the interests of shareholders and those of workers at a company, she doesn’t really understand the question. For her, “there isn’t any connection between the two.”