On September 7, the Education Workers' Union of the ZSP in Warsaw will organize a protest at the Social Europe Congress. The Congress is sponsored by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and organized by the Green Party, a teachers' union (ZNP) and a nurses' union (OZZPiP). Our protest will be in support of the international call for solidarity raised by FAU, but we would comment that there are other reasons to protest both the Foundation and this Congress.

The Foundation and the Green Party are active in Eastern Europe spreading "democracy" and with the help of large amounts of money, are trying to garner support for Green Party politics. Green Party politics is at odds with our political aims of fighting capitalism in various forms, resolutely and from below. We must fight the bad working conditions created to increase the wealth and profit of business, fighting the division of workers into elite skilled workers, with class interests tied to the elite and essentially shit workers, who must scramble for their survival. Instead Green politics deals in slogans such as "social Europe" while working hand and hand with the powers that maintain the status quo. It's agenda is to create a very soft opposition to the current system. To achieve this, it attempts to channel people's energy into any direction other than the class struggle, using just enough elements of discontent to mislead leftists and garner some political support for "common issues".

The working class in Poland have had to suffer numerous serious blows in the last year: the raising of the retirement age, the elimination of the guaranteed 8-hour day... On the eve of mass protests planned in Warsaw, the Greens would like to talk about their vision of "Social Europe", before the run-up to elections and build a reputation as an "alternative". This activity comes as an "alternative" to building a militant and effective workers' response to what is happening. Instead of striking, workers will be steered towards the option to "vote Greens" and let the party solve their problems. (Of course they won't.)

It is significant that this Congress is being held at the headquarters of the ZNP. This teachers' union did not support calls for a strike and its leader was quoted as saying that there is no reason for teachers to strike. "No reason" means tens of thousands of firings of teachers around Poland, the liquidation of hundreds of schools and educational institutions, changing the status of various educational workers so they are not given the same rights as teachers and forced into force and precarious working conditions. All this has been happening in the last few years in Poland, with no response by the union, which is tacitly supporting the neoliberal regime. Rather than get organized and call on teachers to take mass action, the Congress will set aside 1.5 hours of a panel discussion on what reforms we should demand.

Those at the teachers' union tempering the mood of workers and sitting complacently while thousands of teachers are losing their jobs also need to be confronted for their inaction. Their organizing short discussions on reforms amongst small groups of politicized activists while doing nothing in reality but letting the neoliberals get away with murder is typical of the liberal syndrome promoted by the Foundation and their likes.

We will call on the Greens to end their hypocrisy and the union too, since it is also promoting the casualization of many thousands of educational workers by its inaction.