Pracujesz na umowie śmieciowej? Możemy pomóc!
On Oct.2 we took part in the annual Tenants' Day event in Warsaw. This year we walked around the streets of Praga where tenants are suffering from issues such as privatization, slumlord tactics and landlord harassment, rising rents, gentrification and negligence by the city. People stopped in front of houses where there have been battles related to privatization, eviction, city corruption or gross negligence and the tenants told their stories, what they have been doing to fight the situation and the reactions of the state or city authorities or landlords. In this way we brought these problems once again into public view in the neighbourhood, giving people a chance to hear about them, meet their neighbours and discuss further action.
Elections are approaching and ZSP is calling for a boycott. We are against representative democracy and encourage people to take matters into their own hands by building grassroots movements and fighting for their interests and the right to manage society at all levels themselves.
For the past few weeks we have had leafleting actions at least twice a week and have been spreading propaganda around the country. On Oct. 1, there was also a happening in Warsaw with music and street games. There a lot of people showed what they really think of politicians, coming and punching or throwing objects at pictures of them which we had displayed. Besides knocking down the politicians, other games included kicking the government around and throwing the parties into the dustbin of history.
ZSP however always explains that just complaining and boycotting the elections is simply not enough to change the situation. We invite people to get active and organize their anger!
Some photos of the action are here.
TAKE TO THE STREETS AND FIGHT ANTI-LABOUR ATTACKS - TOWARDS A GENERAL STRIKE
The attack against workers' rights is increasing worldwide. Throughout the old Europe, anti-labour laws, cuts in wages and social cuts are being imposed on working people as another way for the elites to control social resources, make more profits and accumulate more wealth. While the whole public is being preached about austerity, the bosses and bureaucrats are still lining their pockets with more and more money.
Such an onslaught must be met by the decisive action of the working classes.
We already wrote about how the bar Nowy Wśpaniały Świat hires barstaff on poor wages and trash contracts. The bar is connected to the liberal think tank Krytyka Polityczna. Following our first picket, we heard that the boss is "considering" complying with the labour law. In the meanwhile, members of ZSP involved in the tenants' movement were invited to this place as the audience in a debate on the right to public housing.
We should be very clear about what debates on social issues look like at Krytyka Polityczna. Although the organizers (the Green Party, which is running on the socialdemocratic SLD ticket in elections and the Swiss Embassy) decided to hold a 5 hour conference on the right to housing, the panelists did not include a single representative of a tenants organization. Instead they invited people from the Swiss Embassy (who brought along their exhibit on "Direct Democracy" [sic]), from the city housing department, from the city council of Vienna and some others. It is this way that politics usually looks at Krytyka Polityczna, with liberals in polite cooperation with politicians talking about principles like direct democracy, cutting the demos out of the picture. Reactions from our activists to the invitation to listen to these "experts" ranged from telling them exactly what we think to deciding to go. After all, we needed to return with an informational action.
On September 23, members of ZSP visited the headquarters of Ford Poland about the situation of the workers of Visteon Cadiz Electronica. (For information about their situation, see here, here , or here. We handed out informational leaflets about the situation and had a banner for the motorists and pedestrians to see on their way to work.
The comrades from CNT at the factory, which produces for Ford and is related by capital, are still struggling for their workplaces. A few weeks ago, the company presented their forced redundancy plan, which the legal team of the CNT will be challenging.
On Sept. 23, activists from ZSP visited the main office of Plaza Centers in Warsaw concerning the situation of workers building the Torun Plaza shopping mall in Torun. The workers are not being paid on time or their full salary. We wrote about the working conditions here.
Despite the fact that our group was very calm and peaceful and when entering the office, we were met immediately by an extremely nervous and panicked person who didn't want to hear why we were there or take some information from us and immediately started calling the security. Such a frightened reaction to our friendly visit makes us suspect that they knew why we were there and that the workers in the office are, for some reason, in a panic. Whether it could be because of the string of people they owe money too is hard to guess.
Concerns with big international capital delay payments. Non-payments to workers on Torun Plaza shopping mall and other problems with working conditions.
Hundreds of workers on the Torun Plaza construction site in Torun are owed money – as much as 2-3 months wages. This is because the general contractor for the site, Karmar, is owed a huge amount of money by Plaza Center – the last figures were estimated at 40 mln. zloties (10 million euros). Karmar, which in turn uses subcontractors, claims that it cannot pay them and the workers on the bottom get left with nothing.
Work through the subcontractors is generally miserably paid. Many workers receive just the minimum wage of 1386 zloties a month, which is less than 350 euros. These workers are then offered a chance to „make more money” by doing overtime off the books. Sometimes they are forced to do this overtime. None of this is evidenced in the official work records.
Members of the Red and Black Coordination have published the false information in Poland claiming that the USI-AIT was at the Coordination meeting and is its current secretariat.
The IWA Secretariat will because of this state the following:
“The USI-AIT is NOT the Secretariat of the Red and Black Coordination and no Sections
of the IWA are in this coordination!”
Oslo, September 15th 2011
IWA- Secretariat
Rolf Petter Larsen
General Secretary
On September 10, ZSP held a picket at a bar called "Brave New World" on Nowy Świat street in Warsaw. The picket, part of an ongoing campaign against precarity, temporary work and trash contracts, followed some controversy around the working conditions of barstaff at the joint run by a bunch of over-promoted liberals from a think-tank / cultural cabal known as "Krytyka Polityczna". The bar also hosts discussions which attracts a liberal / cultural milieu that is consistantly trying to pass itself off as some sort of "new left", despite the fact that it promotes economic liberalism in an even proportion to moderate doses of social democracy.
We published an article by our comrades describing how they recruit barstaff to illegally work on mandate contracts on minimum wage. Although such conditions are rather widespread, we are pissed off by the hypocrisy of these pseudo-leftists who organize lectures on various problems of poverty but who have poor and illegal labour standards themselves. (If they pay at all. We also know they take advantage of their famous reputation to get volunteer labour while at the same time, prominent members of the think-tank are quite well-off indeed.) In the meanwhile, they maintain quite high prices in their bar, making it affordable only for the elite but they got a sweetheart deal from the city for a huge space in the one of the most expensive places in the city. The liberal scum pay only 12 zloties per meter (less than 3 euros) while other bars on the street pay around 350 zloties (85 euros per meter). With such favourable and essentially publically funded rents and such high commercial prices, you would think it could afford to pay its barstaff a living wage.
Around Warsaw, posters have been hung on Ford dealerships, telling the story of the struggle of the workers at Visteon Cadiz Electronica to keep their jobs. The informational action proceeds the next international day of action against Visteon/Ford which will take place on Oct. 14. The CNT in Visteon are fighting against the closure of the factory and the redundancy plan.
The ZSP took part in the last day of action and also visited Ford headquarters a few more times. (Quite coincidentally, it is located two floors below Plaza Centers in the same building.) Members of ZSP also managed to show a solidarity banner to Jose Luis Zapatero on his recent visit to Warsaw.
Photos: https://zspwawa.blogspot.com/2011/10/solidarity-with-visteon-workers-aga...
