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UNI Commerce will launch an organising project in Romania. Supported by Danish affiliate HK, the project will target leading multinational retailers and wholesalers. These fast expanding companies have positioned themselves strongly on the large Romanian market, but are yet to be organised by trade unions.

Vasile Gogescu and Cristina Ionescu, president and general secretary of Romania's commerce trade union. When they were recently elected to their positions, they had to take over an organisation which had lost most of its members and which was financially in a very difficult situation. Supported by Danish commerce and services workers union HK and UNI Commerce, they are now on the road to building up a modern social dialogue oriented union for this large country's commercial workers.

The project with the Bucharest-based commerce trade union was launched during a visit by UNI Commerce's Jan Furstenborg to Romania in April. This was followed up by a three day work session in the Romanian capital between the union's young new leadership and representatives of the commerce trade union of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Bosnian approach to organising, but also the membership registration system developed within the UNI Commerce project, were discussed. The Romanian colleagues told about their experiences with multinational traders entering the country, something which now starts to happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A study visit to Austria in May, where Alex Rüdig of UNI Commerce held further discussions both with the Romanian union leaders and with GPA, contributed to the project preparations. Finally, Denmark's commerce and services union HK agreed to expand their training project through enabling UNI Commerce to support two full time organisers and to launch an organisation development project based on previous good experiences from Europe's new market economies.

Initial discussions have also taken place between UNI Commerce and some of the leading multinationals that are present in Romania, with a view of ensuring that the union has access to the workers. As to the project activities, they will be launched early next autumn.