English

Far from quiet on the Eastern front

Russia seems to be less and less present in the news. Be it Euronews, BBC or CNN, there is hardly anything there about a vast territory east of Finland, north of China. In a way, it is understandable — there are no massive protest movements, strikes, changes of government or something of that kind there. Gas supplies to Europe are sometimes troubled, but still relatively stable. Oil flows to the world markets, and so do metals and timber. The rich Russian oligarchs get richer (and end up in London), and the poor stay poor (and remain largely silent). It looks like Putin will remain Russia's Tsar forever. From time to time something blows up and the pictures of victims make it to the news...

But is it correct to say that nothing else happens there? It's true — there are no massive social movements in Russia at the moment and the ones that exist usually don't make it to the news. But we need to look more carefully at what it happening in Russia for there are both very grave and very important developments going on, which among other things call for solidarity with Russian activists.

Workers from ZEFAM furniture factory in Nowe Miasteczko in the west of Poland were given disciplinary dismissals because they asked when the would get paid.

ZEFAM stands for Zielona Gora Furniture Factory. Workers there had not received salaries for months. Some had not been paid for four months and nobody was receiving overtime payments. On August 19, the workers asked about this. The manager went to consult with the director of the firm, Marek Cierpka. Then he told the workers to "go home". They didn't want to, but the manager shut down the production hall. After some time of not knowing what to do, the workers went home.

The next day, the manager was waiting for them at the gates of the factory with disciplinary dismissals. Most people refused to take them, but they were sent by post to 27 workers. In the dismissals it was written that they were being disnissed for leaving their work place without permission or justification.

Spirits were high and the air full of song on picket lines outside Jimmy Johns this afternoon as over 100 workers and supporters brought business to a near standstill. The picket was prompted by the refusal of Mike and Rob Mulligan, owners of the Miklin Enterprise franchise, to meet with their employees to discuss improvements in wages and working conditions.

Union members say they are undiscouraged by the owners' absence from the negotiating table. “We'll be out here until the Mulligans realize that workers can't make it on these poverty wages. We need consistent scheduling and more respect on the job. We need sick days. We need change. We're fired up and we're not going away until we see the changes we want,” said Rikki Olsen, a union member at the Block E Jimmy Johns.

So far, the only response from the company has been a craigslist post advertising openings at all locations, with starting pay at $7.50, 25 cents more than current workers make.

The Tenants Defense Committee managed to stop the privatization of one house on Targowa St. in Warsaw. This is an historic moment: as far as we know, this is the first privatization in Poland that has been successfully stopped by protest!

In addition, the city has agreed to recommunalize part of the building which was under claim. This means that the entire property (which consists of several buildings) will remain municipal housing!

The Committee is currently fighting a couple of privatization attepts. It is common in Poland that extensive fraud is committed during reprivatization and that there is no independant process of verifying claims and documents.

After days of partial strikes in Flightcare Barcelona, the management has taken revenge on union activists. The following is a translation from the CNT:

Brutal Dismissal in Flightcare, Barcelona

Flightcare has dismissed the delegate of the Union Section of he CNT in a cowardly manner. We from the l'Hospitalet Local Federation of Trade Unions declare that this is a despicable act and shows that Flightcare, despite belonging to a multinational as powerful as Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, deeply fears the mobilization of workers. Far from ending the labor dispute, what they have achieved is further aggravating the situation in a stupid and irrational manner. We will not allow the rights of workers to be mocked in this way and this is why we announced that we support the protests the Section is agreeing with the staff for the reinstatment of the dismissed workers and the negotiation of the organization of decent conditions on the work shifts.

On July 28, 2010, more than two hundred young antifascists and anarchists carried out a spontaneous demonstration outside the town administration building in Khimki, a suburb of Moscow. They demonstrated in defense of the Khimki Forest, which was at that time in the process of beings cutting down for the needs of big business. The demonstration, during which several windows were broken, received a great deal of public attention. The authorities responded with a wave of repressions. The day after the demonstration, two well-known social activists, Alexei Gaskarov and Maxim Solopov, were arrested. They are now threatened with up to seven years in prison for disorderly conduct, although there is no evidence of their complicity in illegal activities. Meanwhile, the police continue to hunt down and harass other activists, especially those involved in the antifascist movement.

Pickets at Azteca Bar in Warsaw are continuing. After failure to make any progress with the boss on Friday / Saturday, ZSP decided to picket the establishment every day at lunch and dinner hours. The protests are related to illegal deductions taken from the pay of our dismissed comrade, attempts to make people work illegally, without any contract and unpaid trial periods, with 'training' that the boss wants to charge workers for if they do not work a certain period of time.

During the first picket on Monday, the boss of the bar became very agressive towards the leafleters and started making many threats. According to him, handing out leaflets should end in 'criminal charges" and he threatened to sue us for losses his business has incurred due to our pickets. He made a great scene, shouting at and filming the protestors and calling the police. Neighbours and passersby then got involved in the argument. Most people tell him he should pay the money.

Duriban is a restaurant that sold bossam and kalguksu in Seoul, Mapo-Gu, DongGyo-Dong district. On December 24, 2009, forced eviction was carried out in the surrounding area, but the Duriban restaurant has continued a sit-in struggle for more than 220 days now. The Regional Development Plan (지구단위계획) has carried out “development” by forcefully evicting tenants without providing any compensation for the losses. Duriban has continued the sit-in struggle with the hope of sustaining the restaurant without being run over by the redevelopment plan.

During the sit-in, the GS construction corporation and their phantom company, NamJeon DNC (남전디앤씨) illegally turned off the electricity in a frantic attempt to evict the tenants, and KEPCO (한국전력공사, Korean Electric Power Corporation) electricity company hasn’t done anything about it. KEPCO has a supply contract (전기공급약관) that guarantees electricity will not be cut without the consent of the tenants.

From the 13-15 of August the IWA (International Workers' Association) Conference entitled "Precarious work, Self-management and Cooperatives" took place in “La Vecilla” in León (Spain).

More than a hundred workers of different ages and from different countries took part, as did the Secretary of the IWA from the NSF in Norway. There were comrades from the Polish ZSP, Slovaks from PA, KRAS from Russia, USI from Italy, SolFed from England, FAU from Germany, CNT from France, SP from Portugal, the Spanish CNT. Later Peruvians comrades from the paper "Humanidad" joined and their were greetings from the comrades from FORA Argentina.

The organization on the part of the CNT-AIT from Leon was perfect. There was an extraordinary atmosphere between the comrades from all over the world since our homeland is the world and our family is all of humanity. The event was self-managed and everybody took part in the activities and the infrastructure. People spoke in French, English, German, Italian, Russian and even Galician-Portuguese or Esperanto, with no problems, everybody on equal terms.

A Protest Statement against the Suppression Took Place Near Yasukuni Jinja Shrine

In the afternoon of 15th August 2010, two protesters against the ceremony of silent prayer in Yasukuni Jinja Shrine were arrested. The relief committee has confirmed the fact as follows.

On the day, before noon, tens of people gathered to protest against Yasukuni Jinja Shrine. But too many policemen and armed police force came and barred the way. So the action was canceled, and the group of people had to leave the place. They went on walking in the direction of Hanzomon Station, which is the opposite direction from the South Gate of the Yasukuni. The protesters walked on the sidewalk with the mass of policemen surrounding them all the way.

After a while, a car of a right wing group suddenly stopped in front of the protesters, and men rushed out of it. At the point, among many policemen, two plane clothes policemen pressed themselves against the comrade A. The police tried to pull the A out of other people. A chaotic situation erupted temporarily. Due to the protest by the people, the situation was once settled. However, the plane clothes policeman didn’t let go of the arm of the comrade A, and the A was dragged away. At that time a T-shirt wore by the A was torn up by the police.

On Aug. 20, ZSP held an action at Azteca Bar in Warsaw. We are demanding an end to the deliberate cheating of vulnerable workers in this cafe.

The problems which led to the conflict are the following:

1. The owner of the bar (Jakub Mazur) uses unpaid trial periods for workers. On top of that, he claims that he provides "training" to the workers and estimates the value of this training at 1300 zloties (326 euro). He gives the workers contracts which state that this money will be deducted from their salaries if they do not work a certain period of time. It is approximately one month's salary - for full-time workers, So if somebody works only one month, s/he will receive nothing.

Most of the workers are students, working part time. Our comrade, a high-school student, was earning about 500 zloties a month (125 euros), so this fake "training" would cost people like that almost three months' salary!

August 9 there was a picket at the French Embassy in Warsaw against repression of immigrants. The picket was held in response to the French government's violent eviction of African migrants in the Paris suburb of La Courneuve on July 21.

Over 200 people, including 45 children were violently evicted from their squatted housing estate. Most had been living in France for the past three to ten years.

Footage captured by mobile phone showed riot police dragging pregnant women and babies along the ground. (Film can be viewed here) http://www.droitaulogement.org/

In a rare anti-clerical action, thousands rallied late last night in front of the Presidential Palace, demanding the removal of "Kaczynski's Cross". The cross, which was placed there after the plane crash in Smolensk, has been the object of much public debate. It became something of a symbol and a place of pilgrimmage for conservatives and far-rightwingers.The anarchist group WRS managed to gather thousands of signatures on a petition to remove the cross.

Many people were against the makeshift shrine in front of the palace and authorities decided that it should be moved to a nearby church instead of standing in front of the seat of the President. Attempts to move it resulted in a violent clash.

Hundreds and thousands of people then became more vocal about their demands to move the cross. As one ZSP activist pointed out, the cross itself maybe was not so important - it was the ideology and people it represented. It somehow became a symbol of conservative Poland - although in reality there are more pressing problems with the church than this cross.

Videos from the mainstream media show the scale of the protest. There were also plenty of defenders of the cross as well. Last night's action began at 11PM and went into the early morning. Some of our comrades took an active role in the protest.

All members of ZSP however later had criticism of some things said by liberal anti-clerics. We criticized people who were saying things like "a bunch of old people are forcing their values down peoples' throats" since this is presenting the issue in a totally false light and is simply ageist. We even heard some liberals who described the situation with the cross as "anarchy". This was an interesting addition to the comments from the conservatives that the anti-clerics were all "a bunch of anarchists". As somebody then cleverly noted, if you believed these people, then it was one of those rare nights when anarchists went out to battle "anarchy".

On August 5, a union protest was held outside of Carrefour Wilenska in Warsaw. This is the same place where a protest was held the week before. The action was organized by Solidarity, and, in typical fashion, consisted only of professional union activists, freed from their work duties. A few activists from other unions, including ZSP, also attended, to protest the working conditions in this shop.

One of the main demands of the workers, presented through the union, is that Carrefour change its policies regarding hiring. Right now, most employees are hired part-time, on fixed-term contracts or through outside firms. 70% of Carrefour employees are hired on "trash contracts".

Another problem is salary: take home pay is about 1000-1200 zloties per month - that is about 250 to less than 300 euros.

Carrefour management would not let the unionists into the building to deliver a letter with its postulates.

The documentary “Freedom, Security & Justice – Migration Management at the External Borders of the EU” illustrates the technological build-up within a new migration regime at the eastern external borders of the European Union.

The film was shot on a field trip of the collective “Borderlands of Europe” in September 2008. English subtitles.

http://bordermonitoring-ukraine.eu/2010/08/07/164/