A colleague wrote to tell us that a work agency which recruits people for the local automobile factory promises work conditions which it doesn’t fulfill.

WorkWonders agency is in charge of finding workers for the FSO Factory who are willing to work for 9 zloty an hour, or 360 euros per month. No experience is necessary they say. The agency encourages people to work extra on Saturdays, although without overtime pay. The claim that workers will be paid for this work from the factory cash register on the day of work but our colleague had to wait about 3 months for payment, which was made in contradiction to the law on overtime.

We joined the boycott of Coca Cola to protest its poor records on human and workers’ rights. We strongly believe that consumers should not financially support corporations which have bad policies, in particular bad labour policies. We find some of the past acts of Coca Cola corporation to be morally unconscienable and are outraged that they try to lekcewazyc the incidents. Among the problems that inspire our protest are:

- Supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa
- The murder of 8 unionists working in Guatemala Coca Cola bottling factories in the late 70s
- Repression of unionists in Mexico and El Salvador

On April 28-29, the Ideas and Action conference took place in Warsaw. The main goals of the conference were to discuss some ideas about non-hierarchical, radical anti-capitalist workplace struggle and to network people who were interested in both promoting these practices and engaging in ongoing and new campaigns.

There were people present from different groups; although the conference was called by the Anarchist Federation Praga, it was taken over by the Union of Syndicalists of Poland (ZSP) who were the main group represented at the conference. Other people from Poland came from the Anarchist Federation, Freedom Equality and Solidarity, CK-LA and Workers’ Initiative plus a couple of non-aligned people. Visitors mostly were from the IWA but also our guest from the International Communist Left made a lively interlocutor. People from Slovakia, Czech Republic, Serbia and Turkey were able to make it to the conference.