Jiu Valley
During the Middle Ages, the inhabitants of the Jiu Valley lived in huts spread along the mountains, and often near the river, and the main activity was shepherding.
[5] As part of Romania's reparations to the Soviet Union for its wartime alliance with Germany, the Romanian coal mines were nationalized and converted into joint Soviet-Romanian companies (SovRoms).
[5] The Jiu Valley expanded rapidly in the second half of the 20th century as the country's communist rulers (Petru Groza 1945–1952, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej 1952–1965, and Nicolae Ceaușescu 1965–1989) embarked on an intensive industrial growth program fueled by coal combustion.
To meet the labor requirement for this demand, the communist government imported tens of thousands of miners from around the country, mainly from Moldavia.
[6] During this same period the Jiu Valley has been profoundly influenced by lack of re-investment, deteriorating infrastructure, mine closures and massive layoffs, environmental degradation, and political and cultural isolation from the rest of Romania.
The few attempts during this period to found independent trade unions or organize worker protests were ruthlessly suppressed, with their leaders severely punished or executed.
As of 1997, labor analysts estimated that there were over 14,000 enterprise trade union organizations, 150 federations, and 18 confederations, representing approximately two-thirds of the workforce.
In fact, Romanians have a name – mineriada (mineriad) – for the periodic eruptions of violence when Jiu Valley miners went on strike and descended upon Bucharest.
[11] When the police failed to contain the crowds in University Square, President Iliescu issued a call to arms to Romania's population to prevent further attacks on the newly elected authorities.
Among those who responded to the call from organizers were coal miners from the Jiu Valley, who accepted the government offered transport to go to Bucharest to confront the demonstrators.
[11] State television broadcast videos of workers attacking and fighting with protesters, including students, as well as the opposition party headquarters.
Nicolae and warrant officer Corneliu Dumitrescu, guilty of ransacking the house of Ion Rațiu, a leading figure in the National Peasant Christian Democratic Party, during the miners’ incursion, and stealing $100,000.
[5] The economic situation for state-favored working classes, such as the miners, who had been relatively insulated against the harsh privation suffered by the general populace, changed after 1989.
The government borrowed heavily without adhering to the conditions of economic reforms required by the World Bank, the IMF and other international lenders.
The government had promised the miners 15 to 20 months of salary as severance (totaling nearly 20-30 million lei, or $1,230-1,846, according to the August 1999 exchange rate) to help them start their own businesses.
By August 1997 the growing criticism of labor throughout the country translated into strikes and eventually led to the resignation and replacement of the prime minister and cabinet.
Organized by union leader Miron Cozma, on 20 January 1999 an estimated 10-15,000 set out on another mineriad from the Jiu Valley to Bucharest to force the government to change its policy, demand wage increases and re-opening of recently closed mines.
The agreement made Cozma a hero in the Jiu Valley, but within a month of his return he was arrested and put in prison as a result of a decision of the Supreme Court of Justice, an action seen by most miners as political revenge by the government.
In its decision the Supreme Court increased Cozma's sentence to 18 years for “undermining state power” in the 1991 mineriad, along with the charge of illegal possession of a firearm.
In December 2000, the electorate, which had seen the country's economic and social situation continue to degenerate under the Constantinescu government, overwhelmingly rejected the “centrists”.
To mitigate the effects of the mine closures, in 1999 the government announced several measures to assist the economically depressed Jiu Valley.
As such, government pronouncements are skeptically seen as mere lip service of politicians attempting to placate the electorate and prevent more miner unrest.
Some still hope that the industry will experience resurgence and point to the example of the Hungarian government, which, after closing their mines under international pressure, was compelled by the powerful reaction of the miners to reopen them.
During the first redundancies, what little income in lei was not spent immediately for basic necessities was typically not deposited in banks (which were seen as unreliable) but was exchanged for U.S. dollars or Deutschmarks and hidden in their homes.
With the redundancy pay-offs, some of the miners expressed interests in starting their own businesses and see the Jiu Valley develop a tourist industry, but the impediments to both are painfully obvious and everywhere.
In the late 1990s most of the workforce still depended upon the mines for work and income, and by 2010 this number was still high, although the economic demographics of the region had undergone significant changes in recent years, particularly with the admittance of Romania into the European Union in 2007.
The region has experienced severe economic decline due to mines being closed and high unemployment, and the town of Aninoasa was called "the Detroit of Europe".
[29] The Jiu Valley mines were managed by the National Hard Coal Company (Romanian: Compania Naționala a Huilei) a commercial society set up by the Government of Romania in 1998.
Through mine closures, forced layoffs and voluntary severance, the number of actual miners in the Jiu Valley has decreased considerably.
During the 1970s and 1980s, workers from pauper, rural counties from all over the country were brought in the Jiu Valley, which led to a heterogeneous population that made social networking difficult.
