ISA: Following the explosion at the fertilizer factory last week, can you tell us about the company and what actually happened?
AM: Yes, of course. First of all, the enterprise is appropriately named Azomures [‘Azot means Nitrogen], as it pollutes Mures with ammonia and nitrogen oxides. It is a private shareholder owned industrial complex, which is about as large as an entire district by itself. Azomures is currently owned by Ameropa Holding AG, a Swiss company and one of the main players on the European grain market, and thus needing a large supplier of fertilisers.
The factory itself was built in 1962 during the so-called “People’s Republic of Romania”, which was later renamed the “Socialist Republic of Romania” as part of the attempt to distance Romania’s Stalinist regime from the USSR. Its purpose was to produce chemical fertilizer from nitrogen.
When it was opened, I think it is important to note, only a few workers from the significant Hungarian minority were employed as the Romanian Communist Party had just started to implement its notorious policy of national-communism. This was a large workplace providing a lot of jobs, but the government moved Romanian workers from other parts of the country to work here, while professionals from the Hungarian minority who applied were rejected. This was intended to create a homogenous population throughout Romania.
After the fall of the Ceaucescu regime in 1989, Azomures became a state-owned shareholder company, later being sold to private enterprise. Although the company obtained 66 million euros from a Czech bank to replace old and unsafe equipment supposedly by 2022, still little has changed.
Despite widespread concerns about what might happen if something were to go wrong, the company, the city and county authorities always dismissed our concerns to keep the money flowing.
But around 1 AM on this Wednesday, 6 July, the whole city was woken up, terrified by a loud explosion, caused by a vulnerable pipe breaking under pressure. The images of the huge explosion scared everyone, and seemed to contradict what the authorities told us. The Prefect (representative of the government in the county) assured us that everything was ok, and that we had nothing to fear. While the Mayor tried to appear more concerned, his conclusion was the same, that this had been an unlucky incident.
The company has announced it will appoint “independent professionals” for an investigation. Of course, they can’t be held accountable by the citizens or the workers. Fortunately, no one died this time, but a lot of ammonia was presumably released in the air, even though the company swears that the environment wasn’t affected.
ISA: A chemical factory such as this in the city — that sounds quite dangerous?
AM: Yes, it is indeed. Apart from the obvious danger of possible explosions, as we’ve seen, there is a much higher danger of long-term effects.
According to a law passed in 2016, people who live in polluted areas for more than 30 years may retire early because of how the polluted air is assumed to shorten lifespans.
“The Foxtail” as the smoke cloud has been named by the workers and their families is no longer an uncommon sight. The smell of ammonia follows us to work, to school everyday, and workers who have been directly exposed to the fumes, although not so old, are no longer alive today. The answer given to us to this problem is always the same “it will fix itself once technology is installed to solve the pollution”. But as we can see very well, the development of technology doesn’t solve the problems faced by the workers as it is mainly focused on keeping the money flowing as fast as possible, instead of making production safer and more sustainable.
ISA: What have been the reactions to the incident?
AM: Well, of course they have been mixed, divided along class lines. The company management stated, as I’ve said, that no one was hurt, that nothing serious has happened to the environment yet, and that there is nothing to worry about, so everything just carries on as before.
As far as ordinary people are concerned, everyone is talking about this to various degrees, but mostly things are so far relatively quiet. People are only now just starting to speak about the need for protests, actions or maybe lawsuits. Of course, the most important thing is how to organise them and prepare the demands.
The two most dangerous arguments I have heard so far is that if a movement was to arise as a result of this event, it would somehow find itself in conflict with ordinary workers at the factory, as if their interests differ from those of the working class as a whole. There are also people who think that things got so bad because the company is Swiss owned, because it is foreign. But as most people might have figured out by now, Romanian companies, or those owned by members of the Hungarian minority in some parts of Romania behave no differently.
There was a spontaneous protest attempted the day after the night of the explosion. Most of the protesters were families with their kids. But because there were many police present, they soon left because they were afraid of repression and its effects on their jobs and families.
But there are people who are committed to go on with the fight, or should I say start one. Although many people are skeptical that something can be done, if they see there are those who are prepared to come out on the streets, they could be inspired to join in, because it concerns almost every part of the city and, importantly, such a struggle has the capacity to bring people together.
The most important thing to do right now is to make sure that we organise around class lines, asking for class solidarity against the company. The mayor, Soos Zoltan, is a more interesting case. Although he stresses that everything is fine, he proposes a referendum to do something about the factory. Most likely, this is just a trick to help calm the mood, allowing people to “voice their opinion”, but without any hopes of real change.
It is not clear whether he will defend the interests of working people on this question, but if something is to be done I would propose that the production line is converted to more eco-friendly production, rather than shutting the factory down, which would leave many people unemployed. We need to have workers control, not get rid of the means of production.
ISA: You told us that you went to the protest. What did you propose as a solution and how did people react?
AM: Yes, that’s right I attended the little gathering on Wednesday 7 July, near the Prefecture and the Town Hall. There were as many police as protesters, and some journalists left disappointed. A group of youth turned up just as everyone else was leaving.
Those who turned up were very much as you would expect from my city, half were Romanian, the other half Hungarian. While we were waiting for the others to turn up, I talked a bit about what messages I had prepared on my pieces of cardboard. They were meant to inspire and express class solidarity with the employees of the factory. They included “We can’t breathe“, fitting for the pollution in and near the city, as well as ”We want a healthier environment and safer jobs“. Some were bolder, such as ”No trust in bosses, the workers have to do the investigation”.
Those who I spoke to were surprisingly supportive. I think there could be a bit of a gap between the activists from the middle strata, and the working class people who come to the protests from those neighborhoods near the factory, but it should be possible to unite on a class basis, without ignoring the interest of the workers. From what I have seen in these two days, and I didn’t know before for some reason, is that there are people who have been campaigning against Azomures for quite some time, and they are starting to prepare for planned protests.
For now, nothing is certain, except for the fact that things are starting to move, and that people are becoming, slowly but surely, more aware. Our town is not so big, that in itself might be another reason to predict that mobilisation would be easier. People are just waiting for the spark!