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On November 21, members of ZSP and Sierpień 80 went to the office of Impuls agency to demand that immediate payments be made to ex-workers who hadn't received any money for months. The agency specializes in hiring poor and desperate retirees who still have to work for a living. These workers were hired at 80 euro cents per hour and often worked up to 250 hours a month just to make 200 euros. To add to the problem, the firm often does not pay people for months, leaving them without money to pay bills or anything. Many workers have quit after a few months of not getting made and were not able to get any money.
We went to the office of the agency and demanded that the people be paid everything they were owed immediately. At first the Impuls people claimed that there was no money, even though today they are supposed to pay people. (It was typical that workers would should up on pay day and be told there was no cash and to come back another day.) We said we would not move until they were paid. The action was meaning filmed by a TV crew. After some time, one of the managers came and paid people. The four workers who went today received over 3000 euros in total. Most were owed 3-4 months salary.
In October we organized 3 pickets at Impuls agency and a number of other informational actions, including meeting with workers, posters, etc. Impuls agency has not been paying workers on time. The problems with this agency have been going on over one year. Many people work a few months and when they see they will never get paid, just quit. Others who are desperate for a job, hang on for months, hoping to get their salaries. Now some workers are taking action to get what they are owed.
Instead of paying workers, Impuls has been busy trying to scare them and unionists who are supporting them. The lawyer for Impuls has been very busy, threatening with suits of 40,000 euros for writing about the situation. A worker who quit and was picketing the office was also threatened by the lawyers. Impuls also has complaint to the police on numerous occasions and accuse us of crimes.
At the beginning of October, Full Job agency published a denounciation of workers who were fighting with the agency. It published the personal data of two former employees, which is clearly against the Polish law. In our opinion, this may have been an attempt to blacklist those people. ZSP immediately reacted to this, as did the press, which reported on this scandalous behaviour. The agency, faced with bad publicity and reminded that their actions are illegal, removed the material.
ZSP warns about using this agency which gave problems to its workers, uses trash contracts and piece work instead of normal contracts and reacts in such a manner to workers who stand up for their rights.
Our comrades who were employed through the agency are now directly employed by the company where they were working. The agency also considers this is be a breach of workers' non-competition clauses. We strongly oppose the idea that workers who get hired directly are breaking non-competition clauses, especially when the agency involved has neither hired them on normal contracts nor ensured that they are employed on the same conditions as the workers at the user employer, both of which should occur under the provisions of Polish law.
On Oct. 14, a delegation from various unions went to the Krogal factory in Glucholazy to talk to the owner about reinstating two repressed workers. ZSP also signed onto this action, along with unions from Electropower plants in Belchatow and Opole, from Opel factory in Opole, the Furniture Workers' Union and Workers' Accord. The unions call on the factory to undo their actions against the workers or we will take further actions against the company.
The situation started with a newspaper article. Journalists from the Nowa Trybuna Opolska paper decided to do a story on how people live on the minimum wage. They interviewed different workers anonymously, not giving their names or even the names of the company. But one boss recognized that it was about their factory: the Krogal factory in Glucholazy (owned by Drobmar). The next day, they went on a witch hunt to find the workers who gave the interview. The workers were identified about things they said about their life: a husband who had a heart attack, an ill daughter... After identification, the workers, who never even said anything bad about their workplaces, were fired.
Following news of this repression, various people began publicizing the case. The idea to do something was pushed by activists who themselves have been subject to repression and fired.
People in the factory, who have ways of exploiting mass fear and the anti-solidary pathology that accompanies it, have been trying to spread rumors that, because of this incident, the boss might close down the factory. Some workers who fear for their own survival have dismiss the repression and are used by the firm against the arguments of the unionists, however everybody recognizes how this works in similar situations and that the need to promote workers' solidarity in the face of such awful realities is greater than ever.
On Saturday, Oct. 5, there was an action against politicians and representative democracy in Warsaw. The action was related to the referendum to recall the President of Warsaw. We are highly critical of her politics and actions but we pointed out that the main problems were the nature of capitalist economics and representative power.
Caregivers of adults with disabilities who stay home to care for them full-time have been protesting cuts that have left them without any support or health insurance. Effective July 1, the government cut aid to approximately 100,000 people who do not work outside the home because they care full-time for an adult relative with disabilities. The Multi-Branch Union of ZSP Warsaw has supported this movement and demands that the government recognize them as workers.
In the past, people who were not able to work because they care full-time for a disabled relative were entitled to help. The government however has just limited this to parents who care for disabled children. People who are care for a disabled adult have lost this meager help. Only a very small group of people – with really incredibly miserable incomes, can get any help, and that is about 125 euros a month. What is worse is that because the caregivers are neither recognized as workers or unemployed (falling through a hole in the unemployment office), they have no payments made into their own pension funds and have no health insurance.
The Full Job Agency is trying to scare workers, publishing their personal data on their internet page and threatening lawsuits because somebody described the situation about unpaid wages for June.
The Facts:
Some people working through the Agency for Direct Post did not receive money for June. The Agency even admits this in letters to the workers – but on their webpage write something totally different. The workers received different reasons for the delay, but finally were told that they weren't paid because Direct Post didn't pay the agency. Of course this is the problem of the Agency. The workers tried to fight for this money. Now some of them work directly for Direct Post.
On September 11-14 there were different solidarity actions with Polish workers which took place in different countries. There were actions at embassies and consulates in Spain, Holland, Slovakia and two cities in Australia. Other actions also took place in Spain, where banners were hung, in France, where fliers were handed out during a strike about the situation in Poland and there was an action in a place Polish people work and in Norway. The actions were organized by Priama Akcia in Slovakia, CNT-AIT in Spain and France, ASF from Australia, NSF from Norway and ASB from Holland. Thank you all for the signs of support from abroad!
Over these 4 days, the three largest mainstream unions organized protests in Warsaw as a reaction to changes in the Labour Law and the Act on Trade Unions which, among other things, allow employers to put up to 78-hour weekly schedules for months at a time. The Multi-Branch Union of ZSP in Warsaw (formerly Education and IT) took part in some protests and organized some alternative events.
On September 7, the Polish Green Party and the Heinrich Boll Foundation were co-organizers, with two unions, of the Social Europe Congress in Warsaw. The FAU Berlin had called for a week of international solidarity actions to support the workers in conflict with the Heinrich Boll Foundation and we chose to do it at this event.
Prior to the Congress, there had been some tension with some members of the Polish Green Party who both defended the Foundation and tried to marginalize and dismiss the conflict as something started by anarchosyndicalists. There was an article dismissing direct action and stating that only participating in politics made any sense. The head of the local Green Party also wrote something insinuating that the conflict was being used as part of the German election campaign and that maybe we were acting in the favour of Die Linke. Then the Polish Foundation published a new statement trying to act dismissively of the situation and accusing the FAU and ZSP of acting "politically" against the Green Party. We responded to all of these things, trying to show how they were using different ways to avoid addressing the real issue.
The day before the Congress, we published the information that the first case against Boll Foundation went to court in Berlin and it was decided that the outsourcing was not done legally and the worker should be considered an employee of the Foundation since 2011. We mentioned that surely the next 3 cases would end with the same judgment, plus any new cases that the other workers bring. All of the former employees lost their jobs when HBS changed the service provider.
