Solidarity Action at Auchan in Warsaw

Members of the Union of Syndicalists along with comrades from the Anarchist Federation and some others held an action / solidarity picket in and in front of an Auchan supermarket in Warsaw on Jan. 25. The action was held because of Auchan's poor labour practices which include:

- low pay
- wide use of contract labour in their supermarkets and incidents of using work agencies which did not signvalid contracts with employees, among other abuses
- bad social policy
- bad working hours including the illegal use of underaged workers forcing them towork overnight shifts
- forcing people to perform physically dangerous work, for example dragging pallets which are too heavy, and work which causes repetitive strain injury
- repression of people agitating for the creation of unions, including the recent firing in Zielona Gora of one activist from the group Workers' Initiative

One of the main parts of the action was distributing and putting up stickers which detourned the supermarket's sales circular. For example, statements like "we slash prices" were changed to "we slash wages", etc. The fake circular told the story of the work conditions in the market, the firing in Zielona Gora and encouraged workers to organize themselves. Additionally, fake corporate stickers were added to many products, especially on sales display saying that Auchan fires unionists and guarantees the exploitation of their workers.

Besides this, some leaflets were given to supermarket employees and to customers.

Earlier in the day, stickers were but on the doors of Auchan corporate headquarters.

The next day another action was held in another Auchan market with members of Left Alternative, Anarchist Federation from another city, some Trotskyists, Bolsheviks and unionists. Some banners were unfurled at this action which was somewhat similar to the one the day before. Similar actions were held in Gdansk and Poznan. Read more!

Three Labour Conflicts Highlight the State's Animosity Towards Workers

Currently there are many labour conflicts in Poland, including various forms of strikes and protest. Almost 20 years after Poland's transition to a market economy, labour unrest is still strongest in the budget sector and in state-owned companies.

THE STRIKE IN BUDRYK: Miners get the shaft as elite get wealthy
The mining industry in Poland is still a quite healthy business. Fuel prices are rising as is the global demand for coal. Budryk is one of the mines in Poland that was making a very healthy profit – until a labour dispute began costing the mine losses of about 1 million US dollars per day.

Budryk, at least on paper, wasn't always so profitable. Its former directors were implicated as being part of the infamous “coal mafia”. The coal mafia for years were diverting profits away from the state-owned mines by siphoning off proceeds to other companies which they controlled. Members of former governments from Solidarity, from the “leftist” SLD, as well as trade union leaders and mine directors have either been implicated or rumoured to be involved in not only the coal mafia but in shady privatizations. An investigation was made and mysteriously “lost”. More recently, a member of the SLD accused of taking bribes from the coal mafia died during a raid on her home. The special forces claimed she killed herself while the opposition claimed she was murdered. Such incidents show that the coal mafia is quite powerful and that there are powerful people involved in the cover-up.

The coal mafia was one of the reasons why some mines showed losses on paper even though the mines had good output and were selling their production at good prices. As members of the government and their business cronies were busy depleting the industry (and the State Treasury) of its wealth, other members of the government, spurred on by proponents of reform and privatization, were busy arguing that the mining sector was a drain on the state budget and that the people working in it were practically the equivalent of welfare seekers: people who were being supported by the good will of the state, a bunch of malcontent charity cases.

Budryk was built in the times when other mines were being liquidated. How could it be that politicians were arguing that mines are not necessary, were arguing that the industry needs to restructure and lay off thousands of workers but then decide that it needs to open a new mine? In one of capitalism's typical manipulations, they carried out restructuring, shutting down mines not because there was no demand for their product, but because they wanted to reorganize the workforce, to employ new people on less favourable conditions, to bust unions and to but pressure on workers.

Almost two and a half thousand people were employed to work in Budryk. Another two thousand or more work there, but aren't employed there. They're contract workers employed by other firms, often private companies which have shady deals with the mines.

Budryk is a profitable mine and the output there is very high. The average output per worker is twice the industry average. The wages at Budryk were the lowest in the industry. This is because Budryk is the youngest mine in Poland, formed during mining restructuring and was intentionally formed as a profit-making machine where production is high and wages are low.

Budryk was merged with a mining holding company - JSW. JSW is one of the companies slated for privatization and a profitable Budryk increased the value of the group. On the other hand, some claim that Budryk, with losses generated by labour conflicts, will help devalue JSW allowing some interests to buy it up at a fraction of its real worth.

On Dec. 17, after a larger one-day strike throughout the mining industry, several unions at Budryk decided to continue striking over pay issues. Budryk was to be merged with JSW at the beginning of the year and it turned out that worker in other JSW-controlled mines made up to 200 euros a month more than the miners at Budryk. The workers demanded that their wages immediately be raised to the same level.

The strike as been on ever since. Much of the mainstream media are against the strikers, as is typical of their class bias. The management, media and members of the government launched attacks against them, even calling them terrorists. They try to get workers against each other by claiming that the strikers are troublemakers, even ”anarchists” and by praising the people who just keep working and are “perfectly happy” with their wages. Solidarity did not support the strike and have played a role in criticizing the unions which are striking. Most scandalously, a long-time member of Solidarity and leading activist in ATTAC Poland called for the police to intervene and crush the strike.

The government has taken a hard, Thatcheresque line on this since the new government is made up of heartless proponents of stark pro-business policies. The Minister of the Economy Pawlak, head of the so-called Polish “People's” Party, is stearing JSW's negotiation strategy but claiming that the Ministry has “nothing to do with the issue”. The Ministry in fact oversees the state's interests in the mining sector and appoints the supervisory board of JSW. The Minister made no attempt to hide his contempt of the strikers, whom he refuses to speak with.

Currently, many of the strikers are occupying the mine 700 meters below ground. 27 people are on hunger strike. JSW has claimed that it can no longer afford to give the miners a raise... because it is lost so much money on the strike. The management of JSW has many times threatened to hold the leaders of the strike financially responsible for the losses of the company and have claimed that the strike is illegal.

THE TEACHERS PROTEST MAY TURN INTO A STRIKE

The past two years has also been marked by teachers' protests over pay. On Jan. 18, over 12,000 teachers marched on Warsaw to demand pay increases.

Teachers in Poland can earn different salaries depending on a number of factors, but typical salaries range from 300-400 euros a month for experienced teachers. (Some teachers take home only about 220 euros a month.) Teachers' work in greatly undervalued, even in comparison to other employees in the state sector.

The Ministry of Education has been promising wage increases for a long time. Last year the government promised a seven-procent pay raise which was eventually revised down to 2%. The situation got complicated last year over political issues with the union ZNP calling for the removal of far-right Education Minister Giertych, who in turn took various measures to persecute members of ZNP for having left-wing leanings, including having them removed from many positions on responsibility within the school system. The mess with Giertych and the subsequent change of government meant that the raise issue was pushed aside and teachers had to return to work this fall with no meaningful raises.

The current government is offering a 55 euro a month wage increase, but the teachers want 3 times that much for junior teachers, and six times that much for senior teachers. They point out that the cost of living has increased so much in Poland that most people cannot get by on such salaries without taking a second job.

As the quality of public education plummets in Poland, the new government has already proposed a “solution” to the problem: tax vouchers for parents who want to send their kids to private schools.

ZNP has threatened to go on strike during exam period if they cannot reach a settlement with the government.

DOCTORS MAY REACH AN AGREEMENT, NURSES MAY STRIKE

The doctors and nurses labour disputes are extremely complicated as they are often in the foreground of the movement towards privatization of health care services. The new government is a strong proponent of commercialization of health care and privatization, about to introduce new reforms which will eliminate many services and force more people to take out private health insurance policies.

I outline the problem of the workers' struggles in the context of privatization in another article.

For many doctors, the “solution” to their wage disputes have been to quit their jobs and to enter into private contracts with hospitals, sometimes as business entities. Often, their services must come at a premium to patients or are only available for paying patients of through private clinics. In some strange deal, the details of which are hidden to the public, the government claimed that the heads of the doctors' union have somehow agreed on a strike-free period during which apparently structural changes will be made to hospitals, including wage increases. Despite a triumphant press conference to that effect, some hospitals are still on strike. Recently, a few hospitals had to be “evacuated” that is all the patients had to be moved elsewhere to get care. In many hospitals, even the emergency rooms are closed now. There is no other word to describe the situation than chaos.

Among the issues at dispute is legislation about working hours. Poland transposed an EU directive on working hours which would mean that doctors are entitled to 11 hours rest period per day. When the new government came into power, they immediately claimed that doctors are entitled to no such thing and that the legislation is just “poorly worded”. The Ministry of Health and even the State Labour Inspectorate issued an interpretation of the law claiming that doctors are entitled to 11 hours rest after their duty, which may in fact last 24 hours. There have been two EU court rulings on exactly this matter which uphold the doctors' right to 11 hours rest per day, but this apparently does not concern the government which is looking to convince doctors that they should work all day and night.

Of course the law allows doctors to “opt out” of this right and voluntarily agree to work longer hours. The government has been actively encouraging doctors to waive their rights by issuing legal opinions stating that they don't really have that right anyway.

As part of the state-organized guilt trip against doctors, who are often made out as greedy murderers who let patients die, the government has been trying to get them to agree to longer working hours in exchange for salary increases. Many such schemes have offered doctors more take-home pay, but no increase in salary per hour. As the state pressure doctors to work 60, 80 or even more hours a week, the care available to patients has not been worth the obligatory insurance payments for a long time and all who can afford it have long ago taken out private insurance or turned to private health care providers. With this the case, the government then claims that people do it because they know that private health care is intrinsically better.

Amidst the growing chaos in the health care system, it turns out again that nurses have been treated like workers of lesser value. Tomorrow, Jan. 21, they'll walk out in protest for at least a few hours and are threatening to go on strike if they do not get a pay raise. They have threatened to go on strike.

Last year nurses set up a tent city in Warsaw for a month. They called off the action without having reached any agreement on their demands. The government claimed (and still claims) that there is “not enough money in the budget” for the nurses.
THE STATE CAPITALIST/ BUREAUCRATIC APPARATUS AGAINST THE WORKING CLASS
Despite “not having enough money” in the budget for the nurses, teachers, or any other useful workers, the parliamentarians gave themselves raises this year, as they did for most of their political buddies who got cushy posts in different ministries and state institutions.

The Minister of Education, Katarzyna Hall, takes a taxi from Warsaw to her home in Sopot and back every weekend and charges the state for it instead of taking the train. (It's a 4-5 hour drive – without traffic.)

The National Health Fund builds luxury offices for its bureaucrats, although the state wants to liquidate the fund.

The government decides that among the greatest investment opportunities for the country is building football stadiums for the EURO 2012 and that what Poland really needs is more F-16s and missiles so that they can build up the presence of the Polish army.

Way down on the list of state priorities, less important than lining their own pockets and bringing business opportunities for their buddies and campaign contributors, comes the fate of not only the teachers, doctors and nurses, but in fact of all public services, which is being increasingly treated as an annoying relict of communist ideology. Perhaps the only positive thing in this all is that the new government in Poland is too heartless to even pretend to give a damn, which surely will mobilize even more workers against them. That is, unless some of them get brainwashed by the media and certain unions that all of this privatization will eventually lead to their prosperity down that line and that the best thing to do is tighten ones belt instead of raising ones fist. Read more!

New Non-hierarchical Union Formed

On 21 December KFP union was registered. It became a representative union in one international corporation's Poland office.

The union is formed on the basis of direct democracy. There are no leaders of the union. Delegates have a strict mandate and decisions are made as democratically as possible.

Members of ZSP were active in forming the union and hopefully the union will grow to other workplaces. Read more!

Killer Cola Action

We organized a little action in the framework of the Killer Cola campaign.

During the action the half-paramilitary/half-Santa Claus actor loaded his weapons when he saw Coca-Cola's trade unionists giving out information about Coke's crimes. One by one he assassinated the workers, with impunity. 3 activists staged a die-in while playing the roles of the slain Coca-Cola employees and former SINALTRAINAL trade union leaders.

The narrator explained the desperate circumstances for Coca-Cola's trade unionist employees in Colombia and appealed to the public to show solidarity with the families of the deceased and other workers by demanding Coca-Cola use their influence and profits to safeguard their employees security.


Damian's account:
http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/12/killer-cokes-santa-claus-reveals-he-is.html

Another Killer Coke Christmas street action is planned for 12 noon next Saturday, December 22nd, at Galeria Centrum (opposite H&M) Read more!

Second Congress of the Union of Syndicalists

On Dec. 8-9 the second congress of ZSP was held in Wroclaw. The first Congress, held in March 2007, was the founding Congress in Gliwice at which the general ideas of association were discussed.

People from 8 cities were in attendance.
The following topics were discussed and decided at the Congress:

1. Some changes were made to the draft statute.

2.Ongoing campaigns.
a. To broaden the campaign against work agencies.
b. To invite people working in or interested in the automobile
industry in Eastern Europe to carry out a joint project.
c. Work on the Coca Cola boycott. ZSP is making a network
of bars and spaces that refuse to sell or serve Coke and working on a
pressure campaign on NGOs sponsored by Coke.

Other recent ideas for actions, for example in support of repressed unionists in Indian and activists in the Clean Clothes campaign, did not get on the agenda of the Congress.

3.Union – KFP
A report was made on the status of the union federation KFP.
(Some members of ZSP will be members of this union, while there are also a couple of members of IP in ZSP.) Writing the statutes of the union took quite a while, but they are quite radical for Polish reality. There is still no decision from the registration court.

4.ZSP Newspaper and Web Pages
Decision to publish the paper Zaplata every 6 months and to improve look of web
pages zsp.bzzz.net and www.pracownik.net.pl. A local Warsaw page will
also be made.

It was decided to publish more theoretical works.

4.Mail / contact.
info@zsp.net.pl Main e-mail contact. Can answer mails/ receive texts
in different languages, esp. English, German, French, Russian,
Spanish.

Other local addresses:
warszawa@zsp.net.pl
mazowsze@zsp.net.pl
dolnyslask@zsp.net.pl
gornyslask@zsp.net.pl
gorzowwielkopolski@zsp.net.pl
szczecin@zsp.net.pl
olsztyn@zsp.net.pl

5. Discussion about proposal for cooperation on defending repressed workers.

6.The Congress set the issue of dues and selected a Treasurer, The Treasurer is elected for a term of 2 years.

7.The next Congress will be held in Szczecin. Congresses will be held once a year. Some informal meetings are loosely planned for the time between the Congresses. Read more!

Supermarket Critical Mass

On June 7th, anarchists from the Union of Syndicalists and FA Praga, together with the family of one striking cashier, held the first Supermarket Critical Mass in Carrefour in support of supermarket workers who were holding a slow-down strike. --- Supermarket workers around Poland decided to announce a work slow-down to protest against having to work on holidays. (The strike fell on the occasion of the so-called "Corpus Christi", which is a state holiday in Poland.) The workers demand days off on all state holidays. With this strike, they were hoping to dissuade people from shopping on holidays by making it a hassle. --- Supermarket workers, often (but not always) poor, middle-aged women are among the most exploited in Poland. Compulsory overtime is normal in many markets, as well as having to perform other tasks, such as moving boxes; cashiers as complain about having to sit at the registers for long hours without any breaks at work which often results in repetitive motion injuries. Wages at the supermarkets are rock bottom, often 225 euros a month or less as many supermarket workers are employed "part time". Supermarket chains however tend to report record profits.

The idea of the action was to help to "slow things down" in the supermarket by creating a traffic jam by parading up and down the most narrow aisle - next to the cash registers. A group of shoppers, some in T-shirts that read "Stop Exploitation", took carts and went down the aisles in rows of two, stopping at almost every product to examine the ingredients, thus creating a bit of chaos. There was no trouble with security guards who immediately recognized this as an action in
support of the strike and asked the anarchists to bring them the same T-shirts.

The anarchists had originally planned on blocking the registers even more by bringing items without codes to the registers and playing other "tricks", but in fact there were so few people there in the supermarket that there were no people to slow down. So instead, each protestor bought a carrot, a grape and a potato each and headed to the counters where leaflets and newspapers were given out. The workers were happy that people supported the strike. Afterwards there was an
action with giving out leaflets in the mall where the supermarket was located explaining a little about the strike and the economics of supermarkets. Read more!

May Day Demo

Anarchists organized a May Day march in Warsaw. It drew about 150 people but was cursed with a few problems with broken equipment and police - it even snowed during the demonstration. Things started late and some people left early, meaning that the demonstration did not "accidentally" run into the demonstration of the left parties as had been planned. Perhaps that saved us; there had been rumours and the radio announced that they were expecting riots in Warsaw so a large group of police were staked out around the corner from the demo.

The march planned to visit a few sites: the McDonalds recruitment center, the Ministry of Finance, the Labour Court and the Ministry of Labour. At McDonalds, we protested against not only the working conditions there, but against the growing amount of McJobs being created. At the Minister of Finanse, we spoke about the Thatcherite economics of our Minister, criticizing draconian budget cuts and the false idea that cutting taxes and passing on the social security, health care and pension burdens to workers will create new jobs. There were some big funny pictures of our Finance Minister and she was cut into pieces in the action.

There was a problem with snow and with both technical equipment and the permission to move down the street with our crazy vehicle which delayed the march, so two protest stops were cut so we could attempt to catch up with the red bourgeoise who were going to have a picnic; anarchists organized a picnic next to them. Unfortunately, the politicians were all hiding inside their party HQ celebrating the anniversary of Poland's accession to the EU, so they didn't get a chance to get a piece of anarchist "birthday cake" or to have a chat with us. But there was a lively exchange with the few body-builder trade union bureaucrats who stayed at the picnic behind some rows of police and private security. Anarchists criticized their type of bureaucratic, sell-out unionism and were called "fucking socialists" by the unionists. Read more!

Ideas and Action Conference in Warsaw

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.

There were a number of presentations and discussions. In the global era where many people work in multinational companies, the topic of linking workers internationally cropped up a number of times. One comrade from ZSP described how the capitalists’ tools for controlling and fucking over workers can be used against them. He told us about some methods of sabotage used by workers, such as witholding or sabotaging knowledge in databases or “know-how” systems which capitalists often us to replaced skilled and experience workers with unskilled ones. He also examined the interaction between people working in international companies in different companies, especially those on different levels of the wage ladder and explored how they can act togther effectively when capitalism is training them to compete with each other.

Another topic relating to connecting workers had to do with the automobile industry. The center of this industry will soon be in an industrial triangle made up of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and people discussed ways of agitating and organizing in this industry. One worker present was from a car factory and several live in the regions where this industry is a growing employer. Plans were made to pursue a joint campaign in the fall and to meet again in the summer to discuss the details.

Questions of ideology and strategy also came up. Our comrade from Priama Akcja in Slovakia talked about their experiences in one struggle and examined some of the difficulties involved, particularly with other unions. Activists from Poland related some similar experiences and strategy for mre effective organize were discussed.

Since there were people from groups with different ideas as to work with leftist parties or reformist unions or as to means of organizing, a discussion of these strategies took place. Clearly nobody’s mind was changed but perhaps some misinformation was corrected and people clarified their positions.

At the end of the day, the organizers of the conference felt that some fruitful things occurred and that it was a good opportunity to meet people and develop a few projects and cooperation. Read more!