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prol-position news #2 | 5/2005
This issue’s main focus is on the class situation in countries in Eastern Europe. The movement of capital and the labor force from the East to the West and vice versa is a decisive element of class re-composition in Europe. Mobilizing a large reserve army of workers from Eastern Europe to supply certain sectors in the West and threatening to re-locate production from Western Europe to the East serve as important levers in intensifying exploitation. The ominous image of ‘low wage regions in Eastern Europe’ and ‘low wage workers’ is partly capitalist propaganda; the real picture is much more complicated. More...
Going East: Investments in Eastern Europe
What some decades ago might have been a defiant outcry of desillusioned lefty teachers, under the threat of dismissal due to their CP membership, is now taken up again and realised by the ‘class enemy’. Within the context of the actual extension of the EU eastward, the debate on re-location of production and jobs heated up once more. The famous quote of chancellor Schroeder denouncing the employers as ‘anti-patriotic’ was meant to convey as sence of urgency to everyone. More...
Investments in the Czech Republic: Boom or Fall?
Transformation towards private capitalism, which started after 1989, was at the beginning mainly affected by the struggle inside the old-new ruling class for the actual character of this change. Already in 1990 the Czech faction of bourgeoisie led by Vaclav Klaus, who was minister of finance and who later became the prime minister and who is now the present president, got the strongest position. More...
Migrant Workers in the Czech Republic
With the re-structuring of capital in the Czech Republic following the revolution of 1989, class composition also changed. A big influx of immigrant workers has been part of this process. Immigrant workers work in all kinds of sectors: in construction for example, in the automobile industry, in retail, in health and cleaning sector, in tourism. Today about 162,000 ‘legal’ immigrant workers live in the Czech Republic, at least double that amount stay ‘illegally’. More...
Strike at Skoda Auto, Mlada Boleslav, Czech Rep.
The biggest class conflict in the history of Skoda Mlada Boleslav took place at the end of March and the beginning of April 2005. It was not that exciting but only one demonstration that was organized and fully controlled by the unions and production was stopped for only three hours in total. It is still worth to pay attention to this particular event as it might mean the beginning of a new round of class struggle in the Czech Republic. More...
Migration, Industry and Struggles in Poland
It is only a one hour journey from Berlin to the German-Polish border, the supermarkets in Berlin offer Polish food, immigrants from Poland are part of daily life in the German capital - nevertheless there are not many direct contacts (apart from perhaps the punk scene). The ‘iron curtain’ is slow to dissolve, due to languages and the geographical location. More...
Here is an update on recent struggles in and around Poland. More information in English can be found on a website run by the base-unionist ‘workers’ initiative’ from Poland. More...
The restructuring of production and society which happened in Romania also sheds new light on the changes in all the EU-countries. With its new and old forms of work and workers’ struggles, Romania is an integral part of wider Europe. The integration of Romania in the European employment system made possible a continuous exchange of experience between Romanian and foreign enterprises, but also between Romanian and foreign workers. More...
Strike at Michelin (Zalau, Romania)
On the 7th of February, the workers of the Michelin plant Silvana in Zalau, northeast of Romania went on an unlimited strike. They used that method after the management kept on ignoring their demand for 30 per cent more wage, even after a warning strike in the end of January. Roughly, 1400 people are working at the plant; almost the whole staff participated in the strike. More...
Interview on Solectron (Timisoara, Romania)
Summary of a chat with a young guy who works for Solectron in Timisoara, Romania, Summer 2004. More...
Wildcat-Preface: Beverly Silver, ‘Forces of Labor’
Comrades from Wildcat have just published the German translation of Beverly Silver’s book ‘Forces of Labor’. The book analyzes the development of workers’ struggles on a world-wide scale in the past 140 years, its relation to the expansion and re-location of industries, the political intervention of states and war, and develops concepts for a better understanding of struggles, e.g. the material basis of workers’ power in certain industries and the political impact on capitalist strategies. More...
Strike at ThyssenKrupp in Terni, Italy
There are plenty of conflicts and strikes in Italy these days. Many workers are fighting against the continuing attacks on and the deterioration in their conditions. Like the struggle of the bus drivers, who since late 2003 have also organized wildcat-strikes, workers regularly turn against the unions, too, which help organize and manage the deterioration. The struggles are sparked by low wages and flexible work contracts, like for instance, the mobilization of social service workers right now in Rome. Other struggles resist the tearing-down and re-locating of (parts of) enterprises, like the struggle at the ThyssenKrupp-plant in Terni/Umbria. More...
Striking Olive Harvest Workers in Spain
January 2005. It has been five years since the racist uprisings against the Moroccan workers in the harvest in El Ejido. Since then there has been loads of stuff written about the shitty working and living conditions of the immigrant work force in the food industry in south Spain. In this article therefore, there is only a short overview of the situation today, in order to then report on how one village in the olive region was shaken by a month long strike of day labourers in January 2005. More...
Chat on the Olive Harvest Strike in Spain
Right from the first day of the conflict several dozen farmers and employers from Bujalance discussed the different aspects of the strike online. They complained about the red tape of the Socialist Party, which they accused of buying votes by securing splendid dole money for the mob. They ranted on about the lack of restraint of the seasonal workers, who don’t cling on to the olive trees like themselves. More...
A new kind of Strikes in France (Citroën etc.)
The world car market - and, of course, the European market - is saturated. It is one of the main economic activities of the modern capitalist world, closely connected to the oil world market. Its fluctuations have for ages influenced the national economies and the social conflicts but have also involved a fierce competition in the conquest of new markets. More...
An assembly plant, 15 km in the north-east suburbs of Paris, France, 3rd of March 2005. In the factory 4,500 people are employed (plus 500 temp workers). Their average monthly wage is about 1,200 Euros. The management tried with various measures to cut extra-payment and reduce break-time, which is made easier for them by the legal changes (see leaflet on the 35-hours law in this newsletter). The strike kicked off when the management announced not to pay the days off which were imposed by the management itself. More...
The government of Raffarin is carrying out painful changes to the Aubry law on work time reduction. Do we have to understand this as a radical questioning of the work time reductions which were introduced by the Socialist Party? More...
Leaflet on hotel workers’ strike (Accor, France)
Subcontracting has become the number one weapon of companies in their offensive against workers. They use it to impose both an intensification of work and substantial wage cuts, by avoiding the strong resistance these would probably have produced if they had been introduced within the big company. More...
We have summarised some reports from various student protests in different parts of Europe during the last few months. The violent attacks against the student demonstration in Paris by kids from the suburbs raise political questions that concern not only schools and the youth movement, but the whole class situation in the big urban areas with an established level of unemployment and parallel economy. More...
As an update on the situation and strikes in the car industry in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Italy we took some material from several (leftist and not) newspapers. More...
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