Pracujesz na umowie śmieciowej? Możemy pomóc!
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.
We now have a Paypal account for the workers anti-repression fund.
Paypal user: zaczek@gmail.com
Solidarity and legal defense for repressed workers and unionists!
More information: https://zsp.net.pl/workers-anti-repression-fund
We are creating an antirepression fund in order to help workers who have been repressed or are being sued for speaking about their working conditions.
Thank you for your solidarity!
Days of Action – September 11-14
In the last two years, the Polish working class has suffered amazing attacks against their rights and working conditions. The retirement age was raised to 67 and most recently, the government did away with the guaranteed 8-hour work day. Unions are responding with protests from September 11-14. We call on people to support by sending messages of solidarity, posting banners or memes on the internet, putting banners or posters in the street, writing articles about the situation and organizing protests at Polish Embassies and Consulates around the world!
The Latest Attacks
The latest attacks on workers' rights include giving employers the right to make their employees work up to 78 hours a week, without overtime pay. This can be done by scheduling all the yearly work in a shorter period and then giving the workers time off during the rest of the year. But the employer is not obliged to pay the normal wages during this time, which means they can essentially pay you significantly less money for the same amount of work.
The Education Workers' Union of ZSP-IWA supports the call for actions against the Heinrich Böll Foundation, due to the working conditions at their Berlin office and their actions against organizing workers. We will take part in the international week of actions called by FAU-IWA and will continue to support this struggle for as long as it takes for the workers' rights to be recognized and for the Foundation to change its policies.
To quote the call from the FAU, "Both the Green Party and Heinrich Böll Foundation criticize the precariousness of labor condition and call for a minimum wage of 8.50 Euro/hour in the current election campaign. But the Heinrich Böll Foundation has been outsourcing cleaning, catering and event management for years, thereby contributing to precarious labor themselves – some of their temps don't even make the minimum wage the Green Party is calling for.
Workers there who joined the FAU Berlin and made this scandalous state of affairs public in May are no longer welcome at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, who conveniently decided to change temp agencies to rid themselves of the problem. In Germany, employers cannot normally kick out workers so easily, but thanks to outsourcing the Heinrich Böll Foundation had an easy time of it: If the temps raise their voice, we'll change the contractor. We call what the Heinrich Böll Foundation is doing union busting and demand that they give those they kicked out permanent contracts with standard wages. "
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".
August 16 there was another action at the Full Job work agency. Some workers employed through the agency, some who are members of ZSP, appeared at the agency in order to get paid for June and July. The people occupied the office.
The people from Full Job gave all sorts of excuses why the workers haven't been paid, adding new „reasons” to the old ones. The people said they would not leave Full Job until they had contact with the owner of the firm. The police were called twice on the protestors. The second time the police helped them to get the protestors out and shut down the office. ZSP plans to return with more actions.
Workers at Full Job agency are protesting late payments in the company. A group of ZSP working through the agency demanded on-time payments and direct employment with the company they work for.
The first news is that a couple of people were hired directly. While this may be an improvement in terms of payments, it cannot be said that the company itself offers regular working conditions.
The problem remains that the company has not paid people on time. People at the agency office just repeated like robots what the management told them to say and claimed it is not their responsibility to pay people, with not the least bit of sympathy for people that cannot pay their bills because of their non-payments. Of course this is not acceptable and we warn other workers about this situation and will be back at the agency with another action.
Impel Airport Services transfer assets and sell company. Workers left with nothing.
People who serviced the airplanes for LOT and other companies at Warsaw's Chopin airport for years are fighting against what has happened to them and to get compensation for being abandoned by their company. The story is unfortunately something that happens in Poland, where corporate profits are put above the welfare of workers.
Five years ago, the workers were employed by LOT Ground Services. The work is not just simple cleaning; they had lots of training in special procedures, they enjoyed stable work with benefits. Until one day they were sold away.
A lawyer representing Impuls has written to the Anarchist Information Center portal, threatening to sue it for an article on Impuls, which described the problems of the workers with getting paid, sometimes for many months.
Activists from ZSP are in contact with workers who haven't been paid by Impuls for months. Some of them already filed suit in court. But it is just the tip of the iceberg.
The lawyer for Impuls threatens to sue for 60,000 zloties (15,000 euros) but also write that in the case of losing contracts, Impuls will sue the owner of the internet domain for an additional 100,000 zloties (25,000 euros) for losses. The lawyer also claims that jobs can be lost because of informing about the late payments of Impuls. In other words, they are insinuating that, the bigger problem for workers is not that their boss pays them 3 or 4 months late and that they have no money and debts during that time, but that if anybody finds out about it, the bosses can have trouble.
Even more „interesting” than that are the lawyer's description of pickets at the Impuls office. During the first picket, workers locked the doors of the company in fear and during the third picket, a boss from the company hit a comrade in the face while he was talking through the megaphone, leaving him a little bloodied up. The lawyer however writes that at the demonstrations at Impuls somebody "committed a crime described in article 189 § 1 of the Criminal Code, illegal imprisonment of my Client”.
