Report on the picket of Lionbridge in Dublin

Anarchists, trade unionists and social justice activists placed a placed a lunchtime picket on the offices of Lionbride in Dun Laoghaire on Friday the 4th of July as part of an International Week of Solidarity with Jakub G, a longstanding Polish Lionbridge employe who was fired for encouraging fellow workers to join a union to protect their pay and conditions in Lionbridge's Warsaw office.

Despite the fact that workers had been warned not to speak to the 'dangerous anarchists' by Lionbridge management the picket in Dun Laoghaire was a good natured affair with about 20 activists distributing more than 100 leaflets to workers leaving or returning to work on their lunchbreak. Before we finished up Damian Moran of the Pitstop Ploughshares spoke about some of the labour and other struggles recently engaged in in Poland.

Meanwhile the case taken by Jakub against Lionbridge in the Polish Labour Court also started on Friday. Lionbridge claim to have dismissed Jakub for publishing an article online which leaked “confidential company information”. No proof of that allegation was given, and in fact another person has admitted to writing the article. The article in question was in fact based entirely on information publicly available on the internet. Lionbridge claim they can prove Jakub wrote the piece yet yesterday asked that the case be postponed until August so that they could prepare their evidence. (see here for a full account of what went on in court: )

We're confident that Jakub will win his case and he will continue to have our support to ensure that he does so.

The text of WSM leaflet distributed at Lionbridge in Dublin after sacking of worker in Poland can be found at http://www.wsm.ie/story/4143 . If you want to distribute copies of this leaflet the PDF file of it is at http://www.wsm.ie/attachments/jul2008/lionbridge_leafle...7.pdf

From WSM webpage.