Archive - English

report | prols 1/2005
Community struggles in South Africa
There are struggles against the evictions and water and electricity cut offs going on across South Africa. These are typically self-organised and openly antagonistic. This is an overview of those struggles and a report of a successful wildcat strike in an oil refinery. It reports the ‘struggle electricians’ who reconnect their neighbours' cut-off power; the women who blockade narrow flights of stairs in their tenement buildings to prevent cops from carrying out evictions; the entire communities that react to the arrival of new water meters by revolting, smashing the meters and chasing away the installers. It is “first and foremost an account from the frontlines of the establishment’s undeclared war on the poor. It is, I am told, a heart-warming report because the war no longer seems to be one-sided”. As this is a longer piece it is available as a downloadable pdf - either as an A5 booklet (print on both sides of A4 and fold in half) or normal A4 format.

report | prols 11/2003
wildcat strike by postal workers in britain
The wildcat strike began at the end of October 2003 in, at the same time and independently, at Greenford mail centre, which was a knock on from a dispute at the nearby delivery office at Southall and at an office in Dartford, London, after a driver refused to deliver the letters that were building up due to the official strike, to another office with other workers. He was sacked for this and his 400 colleagues reacted immediately with a spontaneous work stoppage. The management ensured the spread of the strike by attempting to take the post to other offices. The management knew it was a provocation, but reckoned without such decisive action. More...

report | prols 7/2003
strike in schools in marseilles
By the author: "This text is an account of one week of strikes among casual workers in schools in Marseilles, within the context of a small movement of casual workers in education. Similar 'movements' took place around the country, but due to the failure to organize a national co-ordination of strike committees information from other cities was hard to come by. In the introduction I try to explain the public services in France, their casualisation, and the role of casual labour within education. In the conclusion I give a few brief assessments of the central features of the struggle and its internal contradictions." more...

reports | prols 2/2003
tram drivers' strike in prague
The tram-drivers in Prague went on strike in January - as many other bus-, metro- or tramdrivers in other countries and cities recently. Behind these struggles lies the attack on wages and conditions as part of the so-called privatization. Comrades in Prague went to the picket line and tried to understand the chances and limits of the struggle. More...

interview/leaflet | prols 12/2002
fire fighters in britain on strike
This is the summary of an interview we have made end of November 2002 with a firefighter from Belfast who is also a representative of the FBU (Fire Brigade Union). More...

report | prols 11/2002
everyday resistance in a swedish bakery
For almost two years I was employed at a bakery in southern Sweden, together with about 160 others; bakers, cleaners and mechanics included. From the first day of work, I was told that the bakery was under the threat to be closed down, and, indeed, with time, we got dismissed and the bakery shut down. Of course this affected the mood and ways of struggle at the bakery, and may be worth to keep in mind while reading the text. More...

report | prols 11/2002
struggle against value in a swedish hamburger restaurant
My last job was at a private owned hamburger restaurant. Although the restaurant didn?t belong to any multinational company like McDonalds or Burgerking, it was rather big and was open every day in the week only closed between 7 and 10 in the morning. Most of the people who worked there were teenagers or people like me in the twenties, and there were mainly girls. The majority had another job or went to school the same time as they worked at the restaurant. It came and went people all the time at the restaurant, people didn?t cope with the work conditions or they thought that the wage was too lousy. The majority of the staff was employed illegally and one had too work more than a year to get an ordinary contract and an ordinary wage. More...

report | prols 11/2002
call centre in athens/greece
Teleprime is a call centre company which sells mobile phones and, more importantly, issues credit cards. In the interview me and a couple more people were told a number f usual shit about the company, we were spoken too in the usual "friendly" but also "serious" and "strict" way, we were asked what we expected to get from the company, while mention was obviously made to all those in the company which had "made it" and earned lots of money and to those who had not been able to feel part of the company and had left soon. In exactly the same way as in any other call centre, Teleprime personnel claimed that they do not have a high turnover because conditions are good. Bullshit. More...

report | prols 10/2002
fiat-call centre in milano
At the beginning everything looks really nice when you enter Fiat's call centre in Milan. Lots of space, multi-coloured cubicle walls and little flags, lots of young people sitting in front of large monitors, wandering around or relaxing and smoking in the corner by the vending machines. They speak all kinds of languages: Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Polish... Something between an internet cafe, a children's day care centre and one of those newsrooms in an American TV soap. More...

report | prols 7/2002
being a mcworker in germany
McDonald's is used by some people as a symbol of 'evil multi-national American imperialist culture'. But in reality it only has a different face from any other employer. Working for wages is (!) exploitation, be it in McDonald's or an organic bread shop. More...

leaflet | prols 7/2002
strike in the cleaning-sector in paris (and milano)
Behind the beautiful new clean service-sector society, behind the spotless hotel rooms, offices, conference halls, supermarkets, train stations and administrative centres hides the crappy jobs and miserable wages. Alongside the workers who come from Europe, there are huge numbers of immigrants working too, from Turkey, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and the Maghreb States. The companies hope to use the often precarious living situations (insecure temporary-resident status, a poor knowledge of the German language, no recognised qualifications) to divide and intimidate the workers. But work is also the place where people come together and discuss the shit conditions. More...

leaflet | prols 3/2002
workers occupy nokia-factory near milano
This is a leaflet on the actions of the workers of Nokia-Nextrom who have occupied the factory in order to prevent the closure. Officially they carry on working - also in order to get paid - but actually they are doing work-to-rule... More...

report | prols 3/2002
experiences of a waitress in germany
This was written to share the experience of one waitress with others. We often work in small places for short times, but if we all stand together we have a chance to fight back against the crap we get at work.. This starts with sharing what is going on... There are lots of us working in insecure, part time, cash-in-hand service and catering jobs. We are often fairly isolated. We all put up with similar stuff, but it seems like each thing is a one-off incident. Well it's not... Here is one story and some thoughts. More...

report/leaflet | prols 2/2002
struggle of the railways' cleaning workers in italy
On Monday and Tuesday last week cleaning-workers have organised actions on the railway stations in Rome, Palermo, Milano, Florence, Bologna, Naples... in order to prevent the announced dismissals, wage cuts and deterioration of working conditions. The state-owned railway trust FS - meanwhile divided in several companies - has put the cleaning contracts out for tender. The cleaning itself is being done by several private companies. End of December should have been the dicision on the new contracts. The FS had announced that it would cut the budget for cleaning by about 40 percent. The dicision was then postponed till end of February. The actions of the workers aimed at forcing the private companies to take back the reduction of the budget and the announced dismissals. More...

report | wildcat 7/2001
refusing collection
In the week between the 11th and the 15th of June a workers' struggle of a kind not experienced in the UK for a long time took place in the refuse collection depot in Brighton. In defiance of the dominant spectacle of social peace, the bin men of Brighton took collective action after being sacked for refusing newly imposed work routines. Quickly, their struggle took the character of a complete refusal to continue working under the same management, passively embracing a large part of the community of Brighton. After 4 days occupation, the workers managed to win their struggle and to force the Council to terminate the private contract, while re-instating all the workers who had been sacked. More...