Pracujesz na umowie śmieciowej? Możemy pomóc!
On June 18, in the frame of the International Days against dismissals and in defense of the rights of the unemployed organized by the IWA, there was a solidarity picket at the Polish Institute in Berlin organized by a new Union of Unemployed of FAU and the ZSP. The picket informed people about the working and social conditions in Poland, including the shockingly low payment for the unemployed and new attempts to take away benefits and health care for anybody refusing any job offer. There was also information about the liquidation of the 8-hour day and other anti-social ideas of the authorities, such as putting people without homes in containers.
Activists from FAU and ZSP spoke to passersby about international workers' solidarity and about fighting together to improve the conditions of all, instead of getting into destructive competition and a race to the bottom.
The activists from these two unions also have made a guide with advice for unemployed Poland immigrants in Germany.
We put posters all around the Alstom headquarters in Warsaw and handed out leaflets on June 18 when workers from that company went on strike in Spain to protest the closure of factories and the dismissal of hundreds of workers. (More information can be found here. )
With this we wish to send our solidarity to the workers and to the comrades of the CNT-AIT Zamora who are also involved in this struggle. The action is also part of international days of action against dismissals and unemployment.
Updates here: www.facebook.com/iwa.ait
On June 17, ZSP organized a picket at an employment office in Wroclaw. The action is one of a series of such actions in response to government plans to deny unemployment and health care benefits to any unemployed person who refuses any job offer. Such a person who lose their benefits for a period of 9 months.
Many unemployed people stopped to talk, also proposing, among other things, to take action to get free public transport for the unemployed. The activists of ZSP handed out hundreds of leaflets and calls on people to organize resistance against the attacks on their rights and living conditions.
The action took part during a week of various actions against unemployment.
On June 13, the Polish government eliminated the 8-hour working day, a right which was won in 1919. ZSP will protest and calls for international solidarity!
We cannot allow such attacks on the working class to pass!
The actions of the government are another serious blow to the working class, which is already in a very weak position. We are in the forefront of the neoliberal social and economic policies in Europe, under constant attack - a fact which few seem to notice as the Polish working class remains silently on its knees, begging for its life in front of the executioners of its rights.
It is high time to join us in speaking out against what is happening in this country.
On June 11, members of the ZSP and the Anarchist Federation in Warsaw held an anti-capitalist action in Warsaw.
The action started off with a rather funny happening. People who pretended to be business representatives and representatives of the interests of the G8 presented their capitalist visions in a quite funny way, based on the absurdities of Polish turbo-capitalism and neoliberal dogma. They explained to the crowd how the current system of work is "inefficient" and how, in order to boast "economic growth" changes have to be made. In real life, the government is again undoing the labor law and introducing horrible changes in the name of "greater flexibility". In the happening, the capitalists just took things a few steps further but with such outrageous statements that people could not help but laugh.
The anticapitalists eventually appeared and got rid of the capitalist scum and made some speeches. Also information was spread about what was happening in the anti-capitalist protests against the G8.
Leaflets and papers were distributed. People also could get a free meal. The "capitalists" had proposed that people get paid in rice instead of money (since as everyone in Poland is brainwashed to people, if you "get too much" you don't work hard) so they had rice on hand. The rice was later distributed to poor and homeless people, which are becoming so much more common on the streets of Warsaw.
Poland is very strongly in the hold of the right-wing these days, but we managed to make a lot of people laugh at the absurdity of some typical neoliberal dogma.
On June 8 an informational-solidarity action was held in support of the comrades fighting for direct employment and decent working conditions at the Heinrich-Böll Foundation in Berlin. The comrades of the FAU Education Union have started a conflict with the Foundation over the issue and we support the demands. (More information here. )
The action took place at a conference which is being sponsored by the Foundation. We handed out leaflets to the people there, most of whom expressed interest and even support for the issue. We found that some people had already emailed friends links to the information we had put on the internet. We also went up to a women from the Polish branch of the Foundation, explaining our action. Unfortunately, she seemed to believe that we "must be mistaken" and did not believe there was any conflict in the Foundation. But we drew everybody's attention to the text of FAU, which was also on our leaflets.
With this action we hope to make the Foundation aware that we take this issue seriously and will hold them to task, to ensure an end to precarious working conditions there and that they provide everybody with a decent salary.
On January 8, the Education Workers' Union of the ZSP in Warsaw will make an informational action on precarity during a conference to be held at the Zacheta Art Gallery. The conference is sponsored by the Heinrich-Böll Foundation. Our comrades from the Education Union of the FAU Berlin are campaigning against the precarious working conditions at the Foundation. The aim of our action is to inform the public about this problem, showing solidarity with the workers, but also to raise awareness related to issues of precarity. Since the conference will have many feminist themes, we also will draw special attention to how women especially can suffer from lack of employment security, maternity leave and other essential benefits.
About the working conditions at Heinrich-Böll Foundation in Berlin, the Foundation has been using outside firms to contract workers. They do not earn the appropriate salaries for their jobs. They do not even earn the proposed minimum wage that the Green Party is promoting in their current election campaign. This is an essential fact, since the Foundation is affiliated with the Green Party.
In this way, the Foundation, instead of providing decent jobs to their workers, is promoting precarious working conditions. The outside firms impose very flexible working conditions on everybody. You are not guaranteed a minimum number of working hours, so sometimes they cut back your schedule for some period of time. They do not pay overtime for evening or weekend work, which people are also forced to do. And they do not even get the same guaranteed minimums as agency workers.
On June 3, ZSP Education Workers took part in a demonstration in defence of public education in Warsaw. This is part of ongoing protests against budget cuts in education and against mass dismissals of teachers.
Throughout Poland, around 15,000 teachers will be fired this year. Hundreds of schools have been closed in the last 1-2 years and some institutions lost their status as educational institutions, meaning the workers are no longer protected with the same rights as other teachers. Some other educational workers are seeing a dramatic increase in their working hours, some teachers' bonuses and benefits have been cut, etc. etc.
While a few hundred people protested at the City Council and a few hundred more gathered signatures on the streets to recall the President of the City, a crisis and emergency management center prepares for taking measures "to protect national security"
Hands off the Workers!
About 300 people gathered to protest at the Warsaw City Council against its anti-social policies and various attacks on workers being carried out by budget cuts.
The main group of protesters were public transport drivers. The city decided to take away some benefits that they get with members of their family, which transport workers won in 1932. The drivers have threatened to strike.
During the annual Pinksterlanddagen in Holland, members of the Anarchosyndicalist Union (ASB) and ZSP gave a presentation about anarchosyndicalism. The members of ASB gave a little background on anarchosyndicalism and, since this was an anarchist event, also on its connections to anarchism. They presented the ideas of the ASB and a little about their history and activities. A member of ZSP spoke about the international dimensions of anarchosyndicalism and gave practical examples of struggles on different levels, including some that could be carried out in Holland.
The next day, insurrectionalists with primitivist tendencies made a presentation against syndicalism in general, which led to an animated debate.
The ASB most recently has joined in on actions started by unemployed people against the Workfare scheme. This is basically a program to force unemployed people to work in exchange for benefits and allows companies to have free labor for them, subsidized by the public through state benefits. (Our sister organization in Great Britain, Solidarity Federation is active against this program.) ASB is also involved in a campaign against FlexiWork and is hoping to start new activities in its Amsterdam office soon.
