The World - News from Dec. 13, 1987

Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has decided to hand out pay bonuses in a major policy change coinciding with reports of growing worker unrest. The move, described by one Bucharest diplomat as “quite a reversal,” precedes a special Communist Party congress opening on Monday and comes less than a month after thousands of workers in Romania’s second-largest city of Brasov rioted over pay cuts. There have been reports of unrest in other cities over consumer shortages and Ceausescu’s drastic austerity program. The Romanian news agency Agerpres, monitored in Vienna, said Ceausescu’s proposal called for half of a “profit-sharing fund” to be paid to workers later this month and the rest to be paid in the first half of next year.