Labor Strife Paralyzes Dacia Plant

Come on, thelaine, everybody knows the Dacia is one of those European economy cars we don't get here, because of the headlights or something. Everybody also knows Romania is where Dracula came from too, though Bela Lugosi was actually from Hungary and spoke with a Hungarian accent all the time, not just for the Dracula movies. You have to get out more. It's shocking that they went on strike because of earning "only" 837 Euros. According to my calculations, 837 Euros times 1.28 dollars per Euro times twelve months divided by 52 weeks divided by 40 hours a week (assuming a 40-hour work week) comes to somewhere around $6.18 per hour. That's not enough? It's a lot cheaper to live in Romania than America, so that six bucks and change goes really far. I would think they would be happy about alcohol testing. Some of that cheap export Russian Vodka is iffy, you could go blind with a bad batch. There must be more to that than is being reported. The key point with this report is that the loss of 1500 Dacias probably kills the profit margin for a week, and Renault needs all the profit on Dacias it can get to make up for the high costs on cars built by their French workers. I expect we'll see Carlos Ghosn in Romania soon, gesticulating wildly and inspiring the workers to make up for the lost production.

I am sure you know that Dracula was invented by Bram Stoker right? Romanians only started calling Vlad Tepes "Dracula" to appease the western turists and to keep the turist money flowing. I never knew Vlad Tepes as "Dracula" until I moved to USA in '92. On occasion, he was also called Vlad Dracul ( which means devil) but not too often. Blood drinking wasn't much his thing, but impelling enemies on big long spears was.

Well, how would I know Vlad Tepes was known in the Western world as Dracula? I grew up during the communist times. I was 14 years old when the curtain fell. Information from the Western world wasn't readily available. In the 80s, we only had about 2 hrs of state TV/day, and about 10 hrs Saturday and Sunday. During those hours, they weren't really discussing what the West calls Vlad Tepes, but mostly how Communism and Socialism will triumph over Capitalism because people will demand it. As for hero vs villain...Remember, he was a ruler during very turbulent times. His "nuclear deterrant" was the spear. You invade, you get the spear. The Ottoman invaders weren't that nice either. You can see how he was seen as a hero to his people. I am sure the Turks don't think fondly of him.