This article examines the impact of the recession on collective bargaining in Romania, focusing on legislative changes and developments in the public health care and the construction sectors. Prior to the recession, Romania had a legal system that supported dialogue between trade unions, employers and the government, resulting in widespread collective bargaining at all levels. In 2011, the government scrapped all collective agreements and changed, without parliamentary debate, the main labour laws, making it impossible to have cross-sectoral collective agreements and far more difficult to negotiate collective agreements at the sectoral, multi-employer and company levels. The recession was thus used by the centre-right government as a pretext to reform the industrial relations system.