Labour Statues and Memorials in Romania

The Heroes' Monument "Lupeni 29," was created in 1968, to honour the memory of the 20 miners killed and over 150 injured by the army during the 1929 miners' strike in Lupeni. Circa 30,000 miners from Jiu Valley went on strike to demand an eight-hour workday, wage increases, adequate boots and work equipment, and an end to child labour in the mines.

In 1977, less than ten years after the monument was built, another miners' strike broke out in Lupeni, initially protesting a new pension law that raised their retirement age. This was the first major workers' protest to occur during the communist era. Nicolae Ceaușescu, the then communist leader, personally met with the strike leaders and pledged to meet their demands. Although their working conditions improved for about two weeks, the government soon deployed circa 4,000 army and police personnel to the Jiu Valley to intimidate the protesters. Subsequently, 15 strike leaders were arrested and 40 miners were forcibly committed to psychiatric hospitals.

Paradoxically, during the 1990s, miners from the Jiu Valley participated in the ‘Mineriads’, a series of violent interventions aimed at reinforcing political power and suppressing opposition. The most notorious of these was the June 1990 Mineriad, which erupted after security forces forcefully dispersed peaceful protesters opposing the neo-communist government led by President Ion Iliescu. In retaliation, thousands of miners were transported to Bucharest, where they violently suppressed the demonstrators and attacked opposition party offices and media outlets. This crackdown resulted in six deaths and hundreds of injured. Following these events, President Iliescu publicly expressed gratitude to the miners for their "worker solidarity" and their role in "saving democracy" in Romania. The ‘Mineriads’ are considered as dark episodes in Romania’s post-communist history.

Contributed by Aurora Trif (Dublin City University)

In 1963, the Romanian Workers' Party built a memorial to the CFR Grivita Workshop 1933 strikes in order to mark 30 years since the moment that served as the Romanian Communist party’s foundational myth. The memorial was erected on the CFR Grivița Workshop fence, oriented towards the public in order to be seen from the streets.

After the fall of the socialist regime, the memorial was whitewashed during restoration work on the CFR Grivita Workshop's fence. Yet, a small hole in the plaster, created in unknown conditions, revealed the memorial of 1933 Strike that lay hidden underneathg. In the mid 2010s a local leftist historian enlarged the hole in the plaster to an area equivalent to an A3 paper, and revealed the writing on the memorial. On February 15, 2018, a group of local activists destroyed the remaining plaster , revealing the 1933 CFR Grivita Workshop's Strike Memorial text completely.

Since then, the memorial has been the subject of a symbolic fight between leftist and far right groups. Leftists restored the monument, while far right groups vandalized it, repeating this cycle several times. The photos shared here reveal the state of the monument in the spring of 2025, after several cycles of vandalization and restoration.

Contributed by Alexandru Lita (University of Bucharest)