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ZSP will be a critical participant in the labour action against austerity to be held 29 September in Warsaw.

The main unions, Solidarity and OPZZ call for a symbolic protest, which is not even a strike. Austerity measures of all sorts, reforms in the Labour Code and Act on Trade Unions are hitting workers with huge force, yet all the unions call for is a few hours of protest. These unions even do not encourage workers on a large scale to take a day off and go to the protest: their armies of paid union activists will lead the protest instead. Despite this, we know that some groups of rank and file workers from supermarket chains (who want to strike and are held back by the unions) and the railways will be there - so we will too.

And when we are there, we will discuss with them what these unions are doing. In particular, we are disgusted with the cooperation between Solidarity, OPZZ and the employers' lobby in regard to the amendment of the Act on Trade Unions. This month they are back at the negotiating table at the Tri-Partite Commission, trying to raise the amount of people needed to make a trade union, among other changes. This is a clear attempt on the part of these concessionist unions to liquidate smaller unions. But it is the smaller unions which are the only ones which the workers have any real influence in and which are independent of pacts with the bosses.

29 of September we call on workers to call in sick and use the day for protest and self-organization. There are alternatives to the union bureaucrats at Solidarity and OPZZ - and those include the grassroots workers' assemblies, the creation of horizontal union structures and cells of resistance in the workplace.

ZSP Warsaw