English

More and more banners and posters supporting the rent strike can be seen around Warsaw. Even banners left in public places have not been taken down and posters are being put up by residents in their houses. We know that public administration buildings have also been postered over the weekend.

On September 30, several hundred people are expected to go to the City Council to demand changes to the city housing policy.

The politicians are playing a bullshit game, which confuse some people, but not all. Before elections, the parties pretend to support the people, especially the "opposition" - that is the party which was not in the ruling coalition. It tries to mislead people that all the time it was supportive of the tenants, but that it is all the fault of the ruling coalition that bad policies were made. In the meanwhile, they do not officially sign the proposals for new regulations sent to the city council by a coalition of citizens which now includes 25 groups. (This is mostly consisting of tenants from reprivatized houses.)

The 5th of Meeting Against Homophobia has been completed in Ankara with the conference of Judith Butler, with the headline "The fellowship of Queer and Anti-war Politics".

This year Meeting Against Homophobia which is coordinated by Kaos GL every year has been hosted by the LGBT organizations and anti-homophobics in Ankara, Trabzon, Samsun, Adana, Mersin, Kayseri, Edirne, Aydın, Diyarbakır, Van, Antalya, Eskişehir, İzmir and İstanbul.

"Indifference is the same thing as a crime"
-Marek Edelmann, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The CNT from Jaén strongly condemns the horrific mass deportations carried out against the Roma in France. We denounce the intolerance of the neofascist government of Nicolas Sarkozy.

We believe that these deportations violate the fundamental rights of a group whose members are European citizens with full rights. The mass deportation of members of the Roma population is an act which denigrates us all, without exception, whether we are French or not.

There is no doubt about the reasons to strike. Politicians and employers have been getting us mad for two years. First they fired as many people as they could while taking a lot of public money in aid to banks and companies until unemployment reached almost five million people. When they already couldn't fire anybody else, they started to decrease salaries for workers in the public and private sectors, as if the government had given a signal to start the race to cut salaries.

Now they have not only imposed another reform on us, making it easier to dismiss people, but they want to lower salaries, increase the retirement age, privatize health care...

Faced with so much abuse, a one-day strike (more of a symbolic day of work stoppage) arrives late and in the wrong way. CCOO and the UGT decided to call the strike only when only when the government had decided to dispense with them at the negotiating table, to pass the reform by decree. The sole purpose of this one-day strike is to try to maintain their monopoly on official (but not real) representation of the workers. At the end of the day, this is what they've been seeking for years, through constant concessions and humiliating surrenders. In short, they only want to called in to negotiate another reform, which will be just the same one disguised, but signed and sealed by them. This is what they did after the June 20th strike.

On Monday we took our exhibition "Traces from Lesvos through Europe" to Pagani and turned the space where refugees and migrants have been detained and humiliated into a museum – a place that belongs to the past.

The first thing to do when we entered Pagani was to open up all gates and doors behind which people were forcibly kept from freedom. We built up the exhibition across the yard, put banners at the front side of the building and we hoisted our Welcome to Europe flag on the roof of Pagani.

However Pagani was already appropriated by the migrants and refugees, who had been detained there in the past – the walls inside the cells are telling stories of all the people who have passed through this prison since its existence and they document last years revolts inside and outside Pagani that led to its closure.

This is a first interim report of this year’s Swarming No Border activities in Greece. The first stop was Samos, an island in the Aegean sea, close to the Turkish mainland. The proximity to Turkey is why many migrants arrive here and consequently Frontex is stationed here too. Together with activists from Samos, we organised an anti-racist weekend during our stay there.

This is a first interim report of this year’s Swarming No Border activities in Greece. The first stop was Samos, an island in the Aegean sea, close to the Turkish mainland. The proximity to Turkey is why many migrants arrive here and consequently Frontex is stationed here too. Together with activists from Samos, we organised an anti-racist weekend during our stay there.

ZSP Warsaw is calling for a rent strike in Warsaw starting on Oct. 1. The strike is meant as a protest against the housing policy of the city and against serious problems with the reprivatization process in Poland. It is meant as a means of radicalizing tenants' protest, which the local politicians try to ignore. It aims to bring together tenants who face eviction or live in dangerous and substandard housing to organize for their own mutual self-defense. The strike will be accompanied by public meetings, assemblies and hopefully the creation of neighbourhood committees.

The following is a presentation by the CNT-Granada Education Union for a conference on 'Precarious work, self-management and co-operatives', held in La Vecilla near León, Spain in August 2010.

Introduction
We produced this paper during the closing ceremonies to celebrate the “efforts” of the G8 and G20, and this made us reflect on how the powerful eagerly continue with their strategy of demolition: while ratifying governmental measures to cut the salaries and services for the most vulnerable, they give unconditional support to the banks and employers who are to blame for the economic disaster that we are suffering. The states have started a preemptive repression against the direct struggles of the exploited.

Lately, we are witnessing the consolidation of a model of capitalist production based on the search for low wage areas, which allow the maintenance of a strong competitiveness and the accumulation of large profits for the investors. The gradual and accelerated move of fixed asset industries (to China, India and the countries of the former Soviet Bloc...) and the economic and social transformation of the countryside – that is, the end of the process of rural immigration to the cities - have brought Spain to a debt based economy which has favored consumption, real estate speculation, and corruption. Despite the official speeches about research and development, until the current “crisis” Spain continued to be a “champion” of tourism, residential construction, and services, all sectors that employ high numbers of casual and precarious workers.

On July 31, 2009, three of my close friends - Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal - were arrested at the border of Iran. We had been living in a Palestinian camp in Syria doing humanitarian and journalistic activism, and had gone to the Kurdish area in Iraq – peaceful now for almost 20 years – for a brief trip. A number of local people in the area recommended that we visit the beautiful area around Ahmed Awa waterfall, a village too small to be on our map, which no one warned us that was near the Iranian border. Reports http://www.thenation.com/article/36562/us-hikers-were-seized-iraq indicate that my friends were kidnapped across the Iraqi border by a rogue element inside the local government, and did not accidentally cross as was initially reported. I was on the trip with them, and had I not come down with a cold before they left for their hike, the day before their arrest, I would be with them in Evin prison instead of writing this. After over 400 days, they are still being held without charges, without a single visit from their lawyer, under vague allegations of espionage. If they were officially charged, we would be allowed to present a lifetime of evidence http://freeourfriends.eu that we are the complete opposite of spies. Sarah has spent the entire time in solitary confinement, alone in her cell 23 hours a day, and is experiencing health problems which are not being treated. We still have no idea when they might be released.

Yesterday, a group of hospital cleaners from the Specialized Hospital in Dabrowa Gornicza had a meeting with their new bosses at the Municipal Office in the presence of members of the City Council. The workers are trying to get the city involved in the fate of the hospital staff since it is a public hospital. Still the President of the City claims they are "not a party" in the conflict.

The problem is that the hospital outsourced their work six years ago. The workers became employees of a private firm called Aspen. In the last public tender, a firm called Naprzod won and will now be their employer.

37 cleaners have refused the conditions of the new contract. They are asking for permanent contracts with a minimum guaranteed salary. In other words, they are also concerned that the company can cut their working hours.

Over 100,000 people demonstrated across France this past weekend to protest the intensification of anti-Roma discrimination and persecution on behalf of the French state. Over 8,000 Roma have been deported to Bulgaria and Romania since the beginning of this year. Apart from mass deportations, Sarkozy has also announced plans to demolish illegal Roma camps, as well as revoking the French nationality of immigrants convicted for a long list of misdemeanor crimes.

The concept of revoking nationality sparks associations for many of the collaborationist regime during the Nazi occupation, a time when 15,000 French citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish descent, were stripped of their nationality as a first step towards later deportation to Nazi death camps.

The Federation Anarchiste has thus launched a campaign to draw attention to the increasing legalized discrimination and persecution of Romas. Although the choice of historical parallel can be seen as more than controversial (although in all honesty, at least in France, it doesnt seem to be), it does seem to be an effective way to draw attention to the plight of these thousands of people and the systematic persecution which they are currently enduring.

Workers in one of the biggest university hospitals in Turkey went on a wildcat strike over a wage dispute. They were not paid for August and only received half of their wages for September. The workers declared they will continue their strike until they are paid what they are owed.

About 700 people are currently participating in the strike.

The strikers also would like to see an improvement to their working conditions. They point out, in particular, problems with the use of subcontractors at the hospital.

Jimmy Johns Labor Troubles Deepen as Boisterous Bicycle Picket Puts Brakes on Business at Calhoun Square Location

MINNEAPOLIS: Uptown echoed with union chants and singing Saturday night as Jimmy Johns workers arrived with a surprise bicycle picket at Calhoun Square, bringing business at the store to a near halt. The job action comes two days after Jimmy Johns workers at all nine Minneapolis franchise locations announced the formation of a union and demanded talks wit owners Mike and Rob Mulligan over labor conditions at the chain. So far, the Mulligan have refused to meet with their employees.

"All we're asking is for the Mulligans to meet with us. If they're going to disrespect us by refusing to even talk to us, then they're in for a bumpy ride. The pressure won't stop until they meet our demands for more than minimum wage, sick days, and basic fairness," said Jake Foucault, a delivery driver at Jimmy Johns.

In response to the Mulligan's refusal to meet, the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union announced on Friday that the chain will face a National Week of Action beginning Labor Day, with leafleting and picketing planned in 32 of 39 states in which the company operates.

Why? Not just because the organized labor movement today is full of self-serving bureaucrats who are out to enrich their pockets or their prestige at our expense. After all, there are many hard-working, sincere people in the ranks of union officials. But no matter how well-meaning they are, there are some fundamental flaws in the way the unions are structured today that makes them at best limited in what they can achieve.

The problem with the unions today starts with the way they function, with so much of the power in the hands of paid officials and not with the workers themselves. We say the alternative to this is direct democracy, with all decision-making flowing from the workplaces and local organizations, with elected delegates acting under direct mandates from those they represent, subject to immediate recall when they fail to carry out their mandates.

Press Release from CNT:

The new labour reform that the PSOE intends to introduce is the biggest agression against workers' rights since the transition to democracy.

The day of the strike should serve as a trigger for further and broader mobilizations. A labour reform which they try to justify with the crisis, but which in reality is only aimed at giving more possibilities to the companies to make irregular contracts, ignore collective agreements and dismiss workers at less cost. A reform which will mean more temporariness and deregulation in hiring; a substantial reduction in compensation for unfair dismissal; enormous possibilities
for the companies to reneg parts of the collective agreements such as salary, hours or schedules. More precarity, more insecurity, less salary, fewer rights. That is how the government of the PSOE is.

But despite all that, this reform is only the tip of the iceberg. The reality is below. They are the poor working conditions in the overwhelming majority of companies, the continued breach of the collective agreements, getting less money than stipulated, working without insurance, having a half-time contract but working full-time; there is the obligation to work overtime if you don't want to get fired, or not get vacations, or to have to do the work they tell you, even if inappropriate. If you don't want to do this, they show you the door. Another part of this reality is the contempt which the ruler, politicians and media treat us, in which we are presented as lazy, unproductive and useless. We workers live knowing we are replaceable, that we are just trash that only gets work if we do it more cheaply than before. We live in fear of not knowing if tomorrow we will still get paid or simply eat.