You just talked about
the activities of IP comrades in Ukraine.
Can you please tell us about that?
We are here in Berlin today at the OKG conference.
I came from Poznan, Poland, I'm a member of Inicjatywa Pracownicza (IP).
I came here with this message from Eastern Europe, from Poland
and from Ukraine as well, to share with the workers in Germany:
We live in times of war, but the war in Ukraine hasn't started
this year. It actually started in 2014.
We as workers in Poland could really face it on a direct level
because we have millions of Ukrainian migrants coming
to Poland who worked with us in the factories, warehouses.
But of course, there was a difference
in the status of work:
Ukrainian migrants work with one month contracts
and only stay for six months. But they were there,
so we are able to make connections, establish some links.
And we as Inicjatywa Pracownicza established connections
with the union of independent miners in Ukraine in Krzywy róg
and also Social Ruh, the labor movement
that is connecting all the different workers in Ukraine.
And what they tell us now is that they fight
on a double frontline.
Besides war and all of cruelty which is coming to Ukraine
with Russian tanks, there is also
a neoliberal attempt to destroy any worker-friendly regulations.
So they face deregulation, they face precarization.
They face the weakening of the existing unions in Ukraine.
And they are campaigning against that right now.
They want to make it like we know it in Eastern Europe:
with non-existing strike laws there.
They are introducing zero hour contracts in Ukraine now,
and that it's possible to extend the working time for 60 hours without additional payment
and that it's easier to fire a lot of workers
without any consultation with the unions
and much more regulations which are introduced right now.
So I think we have to really pay attention to this
because we as a global labor movement, we know that we
as workers in Germany and Poland and every country, are weak,
more weak when other workers, especially those migrating to our countries,
don't have this basic rights.
So that
when we don't have a right to strike in Ukraine, it's weakening us in Poland.
And that when we have a very restrictive strike law in Poland, this is weakening
the German working class.
Because the global capital don't have borders and they want us
to compete against each other and fight each other, instead of fighting
the global inequalities and distribution of wealth,
and the real struggles where we should fight on.
And you mentioned that you organized a convoy also.
Can you talk about that?
And also if people here can support that in any way.
The humanitarian workers aid convoy is an initiative
of the international solidarity movement, the labor movement,
which Inicjatywa Pracownicza is part of.
The first one started in April and the second convoy just started this week.
Last Tuesday in Warsaw, there was a conference
of the representatives
of the unions who supported the initiative.
So there were
union activists from SUD-Solidaires, from Cobas, from Conlutas,
and more unions were involved. And Inicjatywa Pracownicza
coordinated the whole effort. The intention of the convoy
is to not only bring humanitarian aid, which is nowadays often
also provided by the state or bigger NGOs.
But the big difference is also we provide what the movement
wants and needs to build their structures in the time of war
and, as I said, liberalization of the labor law.
So they also asked for equipment, basic equipment,
to organize meetings, power, to make electricity.
So they can
organize space
that can be used for the movement to resist on the double frontiers.
And also the whole intention of the convoy is to go there to together.
So the delegations of different Western and Polish unions
went to Lviv to talk and make direct contacts.
Because I really believe that
the debate, the discussion about war cannot be abstract.
It really must draw from everyday experience
of the working class people in Ukraine: Their voices are often omitted
and this is the intention of the convoy
to bring these voices, to show that we have to be united
above borders on the West and on the East.
Because we can only win together or we will lose. - All of us.