“We are not machines!” – demonstration and a picnic organised to celebrate first anniversary of a strike in Chung Hong factory that took place in a special economic zone LG near Wroclaw, Lower Silesia region, Poland.
We are working our fingers to the bones for penies – on a production line, at cashiers, in a call center, in public services, on temporary contracts, as small pieces of corporate machinery or public administration. We are being subjected to exploitation , shrinking wages, instability of our lives. At the same time we are experiencing the shrinking of social security in areas such as education, health care and housing.
One year ago, a group of our collegues from the Chung Hong factory in special economic zone LG near Wroclaw said stop to this and started a stike. On 28th of June 2012 a group of almost 30 people stepped back from the production line in order to manifest their refusal to accept the disciplinary expulsion of their Workers Initiative union collegue, giving resistance to exploatitive work conditions, low wages and anti-union repressions.
After two weeks of strike, management of the factory has staged a lockout – disciplinary relegation of 24 striking laborers, thus stumping on one of fundamental freedoms that were achieved thanks to unions struggle. Fired laborers have been left without any source of income (they are not eligible for unemployment benefits). Till this day many of the workers have failed to find new jobs and are struggling financially. Currently their case is being handled by the Labour Court, which may take couple more years.
Management of both Chung Hong and other factories in LG economic zones, along with their lawyers from JP Weber company have embarked a wide effort to silence the protests, repress union and social activists who backed up the strike. They wanted to erase the awareness about resistance in the zone, so that it would not spill to other factiories, so that workers would not unite. As the events in Chung Hong have shown us, we are living in times where various form of workers solidarity against exploitation are ruthlessly silenced by the state and business. How many of us have experienced this?
Now we want to remind them that they are wrong and that struggle goes on. Therefore we are calling to all who solidarize with workers of LG and its cooperants and escpecially with those fired for protesting – join us in the demonstation commemorating the first strike in the special economic zone.
Join us – struggle goes on – solidarity is our weapon!
Source: https://chunghongstrike.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/we-are-not-machines/