Local Protest

ZSP members took part in organizing a local protest in the Praga district where the authorities want to liquidate overground pedestrian crossings, make more space for cars and force pedestrians to use underground tunnels. Although the city pays a lot of lip service to making Warsaw more "green", or promoting public transport, everything it does is oriented towards cars. The protest was called during a "consultation" with the public, which was a farce. Almost nobody was invited except a few people from NGOs - and only because they demanded the meeting and called other people. Only a couple of local people came, on our invitation, because the city only confirmed the meeting the day before. The city is building a metro station on the main intersection of Praga, currently one of the busiest in the city. While building the metro, they want to totally liquidate pedestrian crossings. Despite the fact that all gathered there were against the plans and that several architects already made alternative proposals, two which were presented at the meeting, it all doesn't matter because the politicians announce that it's "too late" to change their plans, that they consulted with nobody. No competition for the plans were even announced. Members of ZSP condemned the farce of social consultation and called on residents to walk overground anyway and to make a series of direct actions. The first one was organized very quickly and was mostly informational. Residents of Praga took part and Greens. People crossed the streets and blocked traffic, spoke on the corners and handed out leaflets. Some people heard about this for the first time and spontaneously joined the protest. We are calling for a bigger protest in upcoming weeks. Although this one was modest, it sparked a lot of discussion in the papers, on TV and among politicians and urban planners. Read more!

Protest at the City Council

The Tenant's Defense Committee (KOL) and the Warsaw Tenant's Association interrupted the City Council meeting to protest their policies. The city guards asked people to leave but the members of KOL refused because they are protesting against the city budget. They exposed that although the city claimed that money from rent increases in public housing would go to repairing housing, which is really falling apart, they allocated money differently in the draft budget. Only a small portion of this money will go on repairs - the rest goes to bureaucrat's salaries . And of the money allocated for repairs, a good deal is  some sort of gentrification  work to be done at inflated costs. A member of KOL and ZSP planned to make a presentation on this matter at the council - whether permitted or not and KOL calls for the dismissal of anybody who approves the draft budget, as it breaks the obligations set up in the same resolution that raised the rents.


The budget however was not discussed due to tense opposition, not only by the public, but by opposition councilpeople who demanded some breakdowns and some changes before discussion and voting. It will probably be discussed at the next session where there are more protests planned. Read more!

Congress ZSP

On November 21-22 the ZSP Congress was held in Szczecin. One of the topics there were the growing incidence of cheating workers at construction sites. In Wroclaw one colleague who worked at a site run by the  company KUK was not paid when the Polish firm closed its office. It is a German firm which set up an office in Poland for a construction project, closed the office without paying people and claim that this was a "different firm" than the German one. Members of ZSP decided to help with this case and a member of ZSP in the construction industry is agitating at his workplace. We decided that we need to make a wider campaign for workers on these sites and carry out agitation and information activities.

Read more!

National Exploitation Stadium

Work conditions are still bad at site of National Stadium. Today was small information event at construction site. During action appeared two locals who worked in Stadium and weren't paid. So they left the work. At same time, we saw Austrian workers at Stadium. They must have good salaries to come to work on site in Poland. So looks like subcontractors hire the local unemployed people without skills for part of work and don't care about paying them, but firm even spends money to import workers for some other jobs there.

Problem is lack of any organization on part of workers and actions of leaving work instead of organizing. ZSP tries to tell the local people not to let this happen, organize instead of becoming victims. There are more plans to talk to the workers as much as possible and gather more information on the issue.

Mainstream media became interested and TV made interviews with cheated workers but firm tries to convince media that everything is under control. State Labour Inspectorate came to Stadium, but they do not care about working conditions of people on contracts, since they are on civil contracts and aren't even "workers". Read more!

Shocking Work Conditions at the National Stadium

In Warsaw, construction work is going on at the site of the future National Stadium. On Oct. 23 it came to light that there are serious labour problems at the stadium.


The consortium building the stadium is like an octopus with many legs. Many different entities, each using a complicated chain of subcontractors. As it turns out, some work is done by people hired by a chain of 6-7 subcontractors. Each subcontractor waits for money to may its subcontractor, who in turn pays another one, etc. etc., until the money finally gets to the workers. Although there are different situations for different workers, some people take 3 months to get any money and some people on the site haven't been paid at all.

Read more!

Hunger Strike at PKP

On Friday Oct. 23, a hunger strike was begun in the PKP group.


(PKP is the Polish state railways, which is divided into many firms which play different functions.)

A representative of ZSP was invited to go in with the group of striking workers from Gliwice who came to Warsaw, to the headquarters of PKP. As it turned out, this was a group of women, which was unusual as railway workers action are usually male-dominated. There was a small discussion about the sense of hunger strikes and whether different action may be more sensible. The strike is continuing in Gliwice, although the woman did not stay in Warsaw over the weekend. They are due back on Monday.

Read more!

Anti-War Action

Nothing really to say about today's anti-war demo. Typical SWP Polish section. Nice pic by Narmi with balloons coming out of our comrade's head.


Campaign Against Militarism was there. There were leaflets. Also ZSP leaflets as well. Read more!

Antimilitarist Action

Yesterday, 21 October was antimilitarist action in Warsaw made by Campaign Against Militarism. Members of ZSP take part in this campaign.

Protest was due to visit of American Vice President Joe Biden in Warsaw to make deal about missiles and military base in Poland. Police tried to block protest and arrest member of ZSP but didn't manage. Members of ZSP are active in antimilitarist protests against war, military bases and NATO.

Full article about action is on CIA. Read more!

Stop Shell!

Some members of ZSP went to a protest organized by Amnesty International at a Shell station in Warsaw. Although AI writes about human rights abuses carried out by Shell on its webpages, the action unfortunately focused only on oil spills and the effects of ecological damage done by Shell in Nigeria. They did at least point out the human consequences of this.


On CIA web portal, we have been publishing different articles on the topic for years, from a more anti-capitalist point of view. We hope that the young people from the more liberal human rights scene will have a look and realize that the problem can not be cleaned up like an oil spill and that more "corporate responsibility" will not solve the problems of poverty. Read more!

PKP Protest. ZSP Supports Radicals.

On Oct. 13 there was a protest of PKP workers and unions in front of their headquarters in Warsaw. More exactly, the protest was directed at PKP-PLK, one of the PKP Group companies. (See: this article.) PKP-PLK plans to liquidate some regional centers and fire people. Although they officially plan on firing only 500 people, actual job loss will be much greater because they will offer some employees a transfer to another city, knowing that they won't take it. This is often because of the unavailability of cheap housing in other cities. If these people refuse the jobs, it will not be treated as a dismissal or even liquidation of the position. In this situation, those who actually get fired are in a better situation, because at least they will get severance pay.


In the PKP group there is now a small group of radical workers who are critical of the way the unions are acting. Although by objective standards the PKP unions are far from being the worst sell-outs, there were complaints by both rank-and-file workers and unionists over how the situation in PKP Cargo was handled. One of the radical workers explained that although there are many union protests in relation to PKP and even a couple of warning strikes, the unions are reluctant to call for any other action, including a general railway strike. According to him, they are afraid that the company would use a strike as a way to gather public support against the workers. But the radical workers also have the feeling that when it comes down to it, some of the union leaders prefer to keep their cushy jobs and agree with the bosses rather than really fight for the workers.
Read more!

ZSP on the Bad Deal at LOT and the PR of the Unions

Workers at LOT Polish airlines are getting fucked over with restructuring. The unions claim that they have signed a deal which somehow is a small victory for the workers, but this is little more than PR. LOT announced last month that it wanted to reduce the workforce by 900 people. The unions, which organized a dodgy protest, attended by paid union officials and naive foreign guests from Unite and other unions (but with almost no LOT employees),  claimed it would "fight against job cuts" and held negotiations with the Board.


Although the unions announced a victory of sorts, noting that the agreement would lead to just over 400 job losses (440 to be exact), in reality, LOT plans to liquidate from 600-700 jobs over the next six months.

Read more!

Antifascism at Edelman's Funeral

Today was the funeral of Marek Edelman. At the funeral was an antifascist placard in English and Polish reading "Make Antisemitism History. Enough Fascism and NeoNazism. No Pasaran 11.11 in Warsaw" with a black flag. The reference was to the fascist march planned for Nov. 11 in Warsaw which will be blocked.

Read more!

PKP has to pay

Our comrade, fired from job just before retirement age, received a good compensation because he decided to fight. But he doesn't want to go back to the work. In another situation is hundreds of employees of PKP and companies like PKP Cargo, dependent on the PKP. PKP was divided in such a way to move the costs and profits and in the end, workers are fucked as usual.


Unions of PKP didn't make radical enough actions. Passengers are also very angry at practices of PKP but they don't participate to the actions against  PKP or for workers. Now is time to organize for the worker-passenger control! Read more!

Tenants Protest

Members of ZSP took part in the tenants protest in Warsaw during "International Day of Tenant"  2 October as part of Tenant Defence Committee blok. Tenants demand change to housing policy and protest against high costs of rent. ZSP points out how working people don't qualify to get public flats but many are not rich enough to rent flat or to buy. If they can get place to live, it is poor quality or very small. Housing problem divides people more into the classes of people who have and people who don't have. ZSP is against all that makes class divisions worse.

Read more!

ZSP supports LOT staff... but not selling out workers

Members of ZSP support the workers of PLL LOT Polish airlines in their struggle to maintain jobs and working conditions. Management of LOT for years tries to bring airline to ruin so that it will be privatized for very small money. In this trick suffer the workers who hear that their company should go bankrupt. Union leaders who try to fight this were sacked against the law. LOT doesn't care that it breaks this law.

ZSP sent protest about sacking union leaders. However soon it turned out that next union leaders want to negotiate the salary cuts of 30% for workers. They say it saves some jobs. Still LOT wants to sack hundreds. The unions now go on their knees - "sack less but cut the salaries".

ZSP members know about this strategy of union but not sure the workers know about it too. 28 September (today) LOT workers were supposed to have protest in front of Ministry of State Treasury. ZSP went. But there were almost no workers from LOT today. Instead anarchosyndicalists found the "demonstration extras" holding banner - but not the workers of LOT. They found the professional union leaders and former union leaders of LOT. And more than 200 unionists, mostly leaders or fired unionists from trains! They support the workers in transport industry.

ZSP asked "where are the workers"? Bureaucrat from OPZZ told that they should be working, not protesting. There were many interesting comments made to comrade by union bureaucrats and there was sharp discussion.

ZSP believes that in this case, unions will make some deal and fuck part of workers. They propose to workers of LOT to protest themselves and self organize struggle without bureaucrats. Read more!