Pracujesz na umowie śmieciowej? Możemy pomóc!
Today, as part of the days of action in solidarity with the Ryanair Don't Care campaign, we gave out leaflets in the main square in Poznan. Passersby were quite curious what it was about and a few were quite shocked or disgusted to find out about the recruitment scam in Britain. Several people said to please send their best wishes to the campaign.
March 12-18 is the International Week of Support for the Ryanair Don't Care campaign. ZSP has been postering and handing out leaflets about the situation of workers in Ryanair and about the campaign. We've published an article on the internet and have been encouraging people to send Ryanair protest emails.
Informational actions are planned for March 14-16 in a couple of cities in Poland. On the photo is an action at Frederic Chopin Airport in Warsaw.
Since we are also handing out leaflets in airports and trains, we will be distributing leaflets in different languages. An English-language leaflet can be downloaded here.
The ZSP-IWA declares its active support for the general strike called by the CNT-AIT.
We support the stance of this union, which rejects the labor reform and any negotiations over rights already won, calling instead for new struggles of the working class against the assaults of capitalism.
For the CNT, the strike of March 29 should be just the beginning of a process of increasing and sustained mobilization, The ZSP-AIT also understands that a one-day strike is not enough to maintain the pressure against the capitalists' assaults, thus we call on workers to increase their struggle and not to give it over to the unions which may negotiate away their power.
On March 8 there was a protest at Roche global headquarters in Switzerland organized by the local FAU and ZSP. Speeches were made in German and English describing the situation in Roche Polska which inspired the picket. We demanded the reinstatement of our comrade on a regular contract and payment of benefits to all the fake independent contractors.
The picket drew a lot of attention and many employees took leaflets and stopped to talk to the picketers.
The ZSP informed the headquarters that it will not back down and will continue with protests and the information campaign aimed towards the workers.
On March 8, members of the ZSP and FAU Switzerland organized protests at the headquarters of both ABB and Adecco corporations. The pickets were to show support of the EULEN-ABB strikers and to bring this case to the main offices of these companies.
We handed out hundreds of leaflets. Many employees of ABB and Adecco took them. At ABB many stopped to ask about the strike. The reaction at Adecco was rather hostile though, with claims that they are just "providing services" and threats to call the police.
After some hours of picketing, we left to Basel for another action at Roche global headquarters.
On March 5, ZSP organized a picket in front of the headquarters of Roche Polska to demand the reinstatement of our comrade Jakub and to denounce the continued use of falsely self-employed and outsourced workers to deny workers employment contracts and various benefits.
At the offices we picketed, the majority of the people are IT workers, performing jobs for Roche worldwide and earning only a fraction of what IT workers would make in other countries. In addition, Roche uses various forms of external contracting to get workers whom they don't have to pay benefits to. They are not providet by temporary agencies (which, although offering precarious work are at least regulated by the law) but by private "firms" or fake businesses which just bill Roche so that these employees are not on their books. By doing this, Roche does not have to give them the same notice of termination or severance pay, does not offer paid holidays or sick leave, maternity or paternity payments and does not even pay their social security contributions.
On February 25, members of the ZSP went to a cultural event co-organized by the Spanish Embasy, the Ministry of Culture of Spain and the Cervantes Institute at the Staszica Palace in Warsaw. We chose to go to this event because of the presence of people from the Spanish government and lecturers from the Complutense University in Madrid, where our comrades are demanding better working conditions, employment contracts for teaching fellows, an end to anti-union repression, the reinstatement of fired comrades and an end to budget cuts in education.
On February 21, activists from ZSP and the Fabryka collective blocked the entrance to the ADECCO office in protest of their practices and in solidarity with the striking workers of EULEN-ABB in Cordoba who EUROCEN (part of ADECCO) replaced.
The office was blocked and people told about the struggle of the factory workers in Spain and about the problems of temporary work in general. Ironically, the ADECCO office is located next to the regional office of Solidarity union... which has sometimes taken very bad positions in relation to agency workers. So we also made sure to talk about how temp workers and other precarious parts of the workforce are ignored by the mainstream unions and how they had better organize themselves without professional unionists and bureaucrats.
Two comrades from ZSP went in to discuss the situation with the people in ADECCO, who naturally claimed that it is „not their fault” and they would inform the main office of the action. They demanded that we leave and called the police on us. About 20 minutes later two big police vans came, looked at us but then drove away without intervening. So we continued. Since ADECCO was in a good location, with a busy bus stop across the street, there were many people listening and reading leaflets about the situation. The mainstream media also interviewed us about the situation.
Opole is the Polish capital of temporary agencies, mostly sending workers abroad, and almost everybody knows of somebody who has had problems with temporary work, so the local people who are very effected by high unemployment and precarious working conditions were quite interested in the protest.
ZSP informed ADECCO that they should expect to see us again with unannounced visits in other cities and that our comrades would be doing the same around the world.
(See information about protest in Switzerland. )
(Videos from the action and information from the media are posted in the media section of the page in Polish, here and here )
On February 18 residents of Praga and other interested activists gathered to discuss a strategy of mobilization against the liquidation of schools. The government has plans to liquidate around 800 schools all over Poland.
Parents and grandparents expressed concern over the future quality of education and easy access to public education. They worried that they would have to travel with small children further from their homes and wondered what would happen to the existing school property. The general feeling was that private interests would profit from the closing of schools, since it is well known that public property is usually sold off for a fraction of its value. Many examples were given of this. Parents also complained that not enough new schools are being built and that some parents of young children are left without options because they don't have good access to public education, but also cannot afford to pay for private.
On February 17 the ZSP took part in the international day of action in solidarity with the striking workers of EULEN-ABB in Cordoba. A picket was held in Warsaw outside of an office of ADECCO, which is involved in the conflict as its firm EUROCEN has supplied replacements for the striking workers.
We pointed out that we critical not only of ADECCO's role in this conflict in Spain, but also its role, along with other temp agencies, in building precarious working conditions in Poland and around the world.
