Pension rights of Valea Jiului mining companies’ clerks through the privately administered pension house

University of Petroşani, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Economic Sciences, University Street 20, Petroşani, Romania

^* Corresponding author: OanaBaron@upet.ro

Abstract

Since their founding at the end of the XIXth century, the mining companies that have extracted coal in the Jiu Valley have tried to guarantee, though a private system of social security, pension rights for all of its employees, workers as well as clerks. This private system of social security would perpetuate itself, in the case of clerks working for Valea Jiului mining companies, though the interwar years up to the instauration of the Communist regime, when another pension scheme was established for those employees in the workforce. In this study we will seek to uncover the way in which these mining companies’ clerks’ Pension Houses were constituted and functioned after the First World War. They would operate on the basis of their own rules/statutes, would be under the leadership of a Committee chosen among the members of the Pension House, but also under the supervision of the Administrative Council of the mining company. Due to the levies placed upon their members, subsidies given by the mining companies, and other income, the Pension Houses managed throughout the entire period in question to guarantee honorable pensions for their members, and also for their widows and descendants.