Laure Akai

Some hospitals have given up the strike, some hospitals are concluding private deals with doctors. Nurses have organised separately from the doctors with a slightly different agenda. And it well may turn out that the results of the strike are strikingly different salaries for health care workers throughout Poland and increased privatization of the health care industry.

The Doctor’s Strike and the Nurses’ Occupation

LG is one of the biggest and most important companies operating in Poland. The group owns a wide variety of investments, most notably its TV and LCD monitor/ screen production in Mlawa and Biskupice Podgórne (near Wroclaw) and its refrigerator and washing machine plant in Kobierzyce.

Two workers from Workers' Initiative have been fired for union activity. Anybody who would like to show some solidarity should send a nasty e-mail or fax with a protest.The names of the fired people are Aurelia Włodarczyk and Jolanta Szypura. They work for the firm Greenkett Polska, which is part of the IG group - headquarters in Spain. They were demanding a 30% pay raise.

Today over 12,000 teachers from around Poland came to Warsaw to protest the policies of the government, both in regard to its financial committment towards education workers and to the outrageous actions of the Minister and Vice-minister of Education.

Previous libcom.org coverage here.

As of now, mail carriers in many cities have joined the strike, but not all of them. Most post offices are working and accepting mail, even if they are not delivering. The exceptions are in Warsaw in the Praga District where the 2nd PO in the city was shut down and in Szczecin where 23 POs have closed during the strike.

On Nov. 13, a wildcat strike of mail carriers started in the Gdansk post office. Now the strike has been taken over by different unions, mostly Solidarity, and has spread to most major cities in Poland.

The mail carriers' demands include:
- an 8 hour work day for all workers of the Polish Post (most mail carriers work 10-12 hours daily)