Huge Victory for Tenants Group

There was a huge victory for the Tenants Defense Committee. At the end of last year, we caught the Ministry of the Economy trying to sneak through legistlation that would be extremely unfavourable for tenants. The legislation would have allowed landlords to be able to raise rents every month and would have facilitated eviction and other means of forcing people out of public housing.

The legal analysis and social assessment we prepared was introduced in Parliament for discussion and protests were sent. We are happy to say that the bill is now dead and politicians have openly stated that it is because of what we prepared.

Read more!

Antifascists Not Guilty

Cases against antifascists from the Nov. 11, 2008 demo have been taking place in Warsaw. During this demo, a crowd people were caught in a police cordon and about 200 people were to have court cases.

Unfortunately, some of the antifascists from other towns prefered to pay a fine than to come to Warsaw to court. Yet others had some shady advice and wound up guilty, with high fines.

Anarchist Solidarity (connected to ZSP), organized legal help and other support for many dozens of people - and we are happy to announce that they are winning their cases. On March 18, 6 people were acquitted and on March 19, another 14. 

Read more!

Tenants Take over City Council

Today a couple of tenants groups (WSL, KSS, KOL) managed to take over the City Council and force them to call a special session devoted only to the question of housing and to discussing the tenants' postulates. This was a good example of direct action, as the tenants refused to let the council meet on anything else; some eventually took to the presidium where there was heated debate with the Chair and other politicians, including the Vice President.

One interesting thing was the reaction of municipals guards. Already the last two session were interrupted by KOL (Tenants' Defense Committee, which members of ZSP are part of) and the guards did not react. This time, the Chair of the Council asked them to "make order" which us, but all they did was come and try to talk and ask not to keep disrupting. We said "we aren't leaving and take over until our demand is met" and officers then went away and made no attempts to remove people, despite appeals of politicians.

KOL submitted an agenda of postulates for the special session which tenants forced to city to hold. Only question now is what concessions they will give tenants. Members of ZSP and KOL will push for maximum demands, including handing over supervision of public housing to citizens. Of course most radicals demands are not likely to be met, but tenants today feel they are in a good position to force at least some of their points.

This is the second such action KOL has taken part in this week. Read more!

Worst Employer of the Year

Tonight was the announcement of the outcome of the second annual Worst Employer of the Year Contest organized by ZSP. The initial announcement was made at a concert of the group which wrote the hymn of the contest.


And the worst employer of the year was.........


Alpine Bud (Alpine Bau), general contractor of the National Stadium in Warsaw and the A1 highway in Silesia. At the National Stadium Alpine uses many subcontractors who don't always pay workers and there even were wildcat strikes there last year. In December, 2 people were killed working on the stadium. Workers explained that there were gross violation of safety procedures and the person responsible from Alpine tried to cover it up, falsifying documents.

(See the English section of www.pracownik.net.pl for more details.) 


On the A1 highway, workers were forced to work up to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Highway workers started to call the job "a work camp". There were many complaints, including firings with no notice and no reason.  Workers were also forced to sign annexes to their contracts which lowered their salaries. People who didn't sign were fired. The problems with Alpine got so bad that they were kicked off the construction project. One of the last straws was that the company wanted to force workers to build a bridge on the highway that engineers said would be unsafe.


More about this and information on the runners-up soon to follow.


The results will appear tomorrow in the major newspapers and an "award" will be given to the company. Read more!

Warsaw Manifa (Women's Day)

On March 7, ZSP Warsaw took part in the annual Women's Day demonstration, going with a radical message as usual. For the third year in a row, ZSP formed a blok with the group WRS - this year known as the Revolutionary Blok.  Although only about 40 red and black activists marched in it. (the rest of the anarchists apparently prefering to march in the "colourful blok" (ie. clowns, etc.), the revolutionary blok attracted both the rest of the radical left, who marched nearby, as well as the teacher's union ZNP (which marched besides ZSP, causing a little confusion for onlookers, especially as ZSP was handing out the new newspaper for radical education workers.)



For the first time in the 10 years of this demonstration, there were several mainstream trade unions presence. However, most of these unions sent nothing but a symbolic group to march - some of them amounting to 20-30 people, thus lss than our blok. Curiously, despite the fact that these unions altogether must have brought about 200 new faces to the demo,  the crowd is smaller than in previous year, perhaps less than half of last year. Could it be that labour issues as just not as sexy as the scores of neoliberal celebrity feminists that usually party from the platform trucks?

Not to worry - keeping in typical "anti-sectarian" feminist style, after female unionists spoke, the platform was given over to a representative of the Confederation of Private Employers who told women how they have to behave in solidarity with their bosses so we can all survive this time of crisis.


As usual, we had our provocative leaflets and newspaper and a banner.This time our banner read "Social Revolution Instead of Parity" - a reference to the main project of feminists over the past year - trying to get a law passed requiring parties to put an equal number of women on the ballot.Our leaflet also referred to this project. Below is a translation ofthe main part of our leaflet.

Read more!

Action in Wroclaw

A couple of people from ZSP Warsaw went to Wroclaw to support an action at Green Way restaurant. A full report on the action is here.

Later in the evening, people also visited the bookshop "Falanster" where there was a conflict with ZSP a few months ago. 

Next week will be a national day of action against Green Way. Read more!

Revolutionary Block - March 7

ZSP is organizing the revolutionary blok during the feminist demonstration March 7. As usual, our radical block will be an alternative to the liberal dominated march. This year we will offer an anarchafeminsit critique of the main political project of feminists this year: parity on electoral lists.


Among the slogans of the block are "Emancipation is not won with the ballot box",  "Social revolution instead of parity" and "General strike - enough compromises'! Read more!

Warsaw: Picket at Greenway

27 February ZSP held a picket in front of the busiest Green Way restaurant in Warsaw as part of boycott called against the restaurant. First people gave information about workers' rights and organization and about the problems in Greenway that led to the boycott. Then there was a picket outside this busy restaurant. The manager was upset about it and called to the director of the company to explain that their was a protest there. Although he claimed that there were no violations in his bar, it later turned out that workers there, as probably in most Green Way restaurants, are also not given statutory overtime payments.
The director of the company explained that unpaid work should not happen again in Green Way, but there is no information about how this is going to be stopped or about when people will receive their money for the time they worked for free. In addition, he claimed that the problem in Wroclaw was resolved, although we know that people haven't been paid.


We told the manager that the firm should aim to guarantee compliance with the labour law and good working conditions at the restaurants and that we will continue to make pressure on them until we know that things have really changed.

We also encouraged workers to organize themselves throughout the chain. There is already some interest, but such campaigns have not existed in this sector until now. Criticism about precarious work conditions and McJobs are not well known, the traditional labour movement does not really deal with this and there is no history of workers' self organization in these types of jobs. Still, this Green Way case has already brought the issue of unpaid trial periods to thousands of people who might not have known about it otherwise.

www.greenway.zsp.net.pl Read more!

Warsaw: Solidarity with the Belgrade 6!

In Warsaw there were two solidarity actions for the Belgrade six in recent days: on February 16 there was a picket at the Serbian Embassy and February 25 there was a demonstration organized by ZSP and WRS as part of the International Solidarity Day called for by ASI.


The demonstration, although only about 30 people, was very visible and went a couple of hours through Warsaw, stopping at many places for speeches. The police did not manage to stop the demonstration, even after it blocked an important intersection. Besides words of solidarity for the Belgrade Six, there were lots of good anti-state and anti-capitalist slogans, and everytime the demo passed some objectionable place (like Starbucks), there were some additional slogans and speeches.

The demo attracted a lot of attention and curiosity and many leaflets about the case were handed out. Some of the people had heard about it before. Read more!

Delegation in Berlin

A small delegation went to Berlin to show solidarity with FAU in their struggle against the state and the bosses at Kino Babylon Mitte.


A few hundred people marched during the award ceremonies at the Berlin Film Festival Berlinale. Speeches were made about the freedom to organize and people vowed to continue the struggle to ensure FAU's right to exist and take action as a union.


On the sign: "Only pigs sit in the cinema - Boycott Kino Babylon". The slogan about pigs is famous in Poland and refers to the boycott of nazi-run cinemas in occupied Poland.



Read more!

Head of City Council Greets Tenants

For the first time in approximately 10 months protesting at the City Council, the head of the council handed over her duties to another person to meet with a group of tenants and members of the Tenants' Defense Committee. Of course we were not too impressed by the gesture. Either she got worn down from the protests or her party finally decided that they must try to deal with the problem following announcement of the motion to dismiss the Mayor.


The head of the City Council also faced such a motion a few months ago but was not recalled from her duties since the leftists are in a coalition with the neo-liberals in Warsaw.



Read more!

Belgrade Six Released

There is news that six comrades arrested in Belgrade have been released. The trial will continue. Maybe the charges will be changed.


Some small action was made in Warsaw before trial and 25 February ZSP Warsaw takes part in international day of action. Read more!

Boycott Greenway

ZSP received the mail from the main shareholder of GreenWay corporation saying he is sorry about problems but with no committment to do anything and pretending this is isolated incident. ZSP is announcing that it is starting a boycott if GreenWay doesn't take concrete steps immediately. Wroclaw comrades made a picket during which a former employee confronted the boss about being cheated and the boss claimed she never even worked there. This shows disgusting attitude of capitalist exploiters. 


Special material will be prepared for actions around Poland. Read more!

Tenants Take Over City Meeting

Members of the Tenants' Defense Committee and residents of three apartment blocks fighting with local politicians and a corrupt housing administration found out about a meeting of a committee which was to be dedicated to their case. The meeting was scheduled just before the council session in downtown Warsaw. So about 40 people showed up and demanded that the council deal with their problems immediately.  Fearing possible action by the tenants, the politicians changed the agenda of the council session and the situation of the tenants was discussed for hours.


Although the behaviour of the head of the housing administration and some politicians ranged from scandalous lies to pretending not to be able to do anything, others were sympathic. A member of Parliament came to argue on behalf of the tenants. A few concrete demands were met, but others not yet; tenants are waiting on some studies and decisions.


As a result of these protests, some politicians have called for the dismissal of both the head of the housing authority and the Mayor. A vote to recall the Mayor will be held at the next council session but it is not likely to pass. Still, a clear message was sent that people cannot be treated like trash by the administration.



Read more!

Another Informational Action - for Free and Libertarian Education

Once again there was an informational action for free education, this time near Warsaw University. Since most students in near the university were weekend students, who have to pay for studies and often come from less priveleged backgrounds than day-time students who study for free, there was lots of interest and support for at least the idea of free studies.

ZSP Education will hold a lecture on the Bologna Process at Warsaw University on March 11. On this day there will be ministerial meetings commemorating ten years of the Process, accompanied by demonstrations in Budapest and Vienna.

Read more!