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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...
Another person has managed to get back money which was wrongly deducted from his pay after our intervention. The worker from Poznan was contracted by OTTO to work in Holland. Unfortunately, he started to get different strange deductions from his salary and in the end, when there was no more work, they deducted a 500 euro penalty for supposedly breaking the contract early.
We are happy to report that OTTO resolved this problem rather quickly. The penalty was annulled, and also different "deposits" were returned to him, totaling 440 euros. The worker is now satisfied that this money and the total of 940 euros were accounted for. Another reason why is it best to act when you notice discrepancies on your pay slip.
The ZSP-IWA stands in solidarity with the workers of the Visteon Cadiz Electronica plant, struggling against the closure of the factory. We took part in the International Day of Struggle against Ford-Visteon called for by the CNT and the IWA, organizing a couple of pickets and informing the public, which was overwhelmingly sympathetic, of the situation.
Visteon is a company created by and dependent on Ford. Ford has created a network of legally independent companies through which it can outsource work, transfer funds and do all sorts of machinations to avoid tax liabilities and their responsibilities towards workers. Visteon/Ford also profits off opening up factories, shutting them down, moving money around to hide their wealth and even to cheat the workers. 450 workers in Cadiz face the elimination of their workplaces due to corporate greed. The CNT union section in Visteon is fighting against the closure, while other unions are engaged in a pantomime struggle, negotiating redundancy plans with the bosses.
All our solidarity and support goes to the uncompromising position of our sister union in Spain, which does not accept the elimination of the workplaces and which seeks to mobilize workers to struggle and not give up.
Protests have been taking place continuously against price increases. Mostly we have been riding the trams, buses and metro and giving out leaflets, calling for direct action. Today we gathered at the Centrum metro station. There people told about the different methods of direct action and called on people to act in solidarity with those not paying their fare in order to discourage the work of the ticket controllers. People spoke about social protests in other countries, including protests against transport fare increases which recently took place in Portugal. There was also an interesting discussion about the history of recent social movements in Poland, how the leaders of movements like Solidarity came into power and sold out and what lessons we can learn about the nature of politics and political power.
This year for the third year in a row, ZSP held a competition for the “Worst Boss of the Year”. Hundreds of workers write with stories of exploitation, harassment and bad working conditions. After checking details and much consideration the “awards” are given, and information from the employees is published and spread in the media. We also give information about other complaints: all the bosses are bad and deserve criticism and it is truly difficult to know which of the candidates are worse!
This year, 2 of the 3 worst employees have publicly reacted to the contest, denying the workers' testimonies. In addition, one has threatened to sue us. In response, more and more employees of these companies are writing in support, providing more testimony and evidence against these employers.
On Aug. 1, the anniversary of the start of the Warsaw Uprising, members of the ZSP left flowers and a message in front of the House of Professors by the plaque to the war-time ZSP. During the nazi occupation and war, the ZSP created the 104 Company of Syndicalists, involved in several important actions and maintained a key position in the old town of Warsaw, headquartered in the House of Professors. It was comprised mainly of syndicalist activists from the movement which existed before the war but was crushed by the nazis and the Stalinists. However there were also some people who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto at the House of Professors, as well as a group of Greeks. The 104 Company of Syndicalists also had a womens´ army. The Company started out with around 50 people but soon grew to about 1000, making it one of the largest forces in the Uprising.
For the past month, members of the ZSP have been making protests on public transport against increases in ticket prices. People go almost every day, handing out leaflets, calling on people to try to overturn the City Council's decision by means of referendum and to organize and take direct action. This means not paying the new fares, which go into effect Aug. 16 or, if people do buy a ticket, giving them away to other people. On July 30, ZSP organized an event called "Night of the Free Riders" where people were supposed to go for free on public transport in an open manner, like we have been doing for the past month. Using the tactics of flash mobs, people could organize small groups throughout the city using SMS to designate the starting points.
The action has got a lot of attention and was called a "resistance movement" in the mainstream press. Thousands of Varsovians have spoken out against the price increases although, unfortunately, far fewer participate in direct actions. However, it is likely that enough signatures will be gathered to force a referendum, unless the neo-liberals find some way to block it. At last count, about 130,000 of the 140,000 signatures needed for a referendum have already been gathered.
