Belfast shipyard Harland and Wolff once employed 35,000 people writes Barney Cassidy. Its workforce was the aristocracy of the city’s working class. They were heavily unionised and well paid by local standards. They were also enthusiastic participants in every major sectarian pogrom in 19th and (...)
Once Greeks start to get old, they start saving money for “apoklistiki” (medical assistants) – just as Bulgarian pensioners save money for funerals. Due to the lack of sufficient personnel in hospitals, the care of old people is done mostly by foreigners, who predominantly work illegally.
A few (...)
On 1 January 2019, a comprehensive pension reform came into force in Croatia, but for trade unions, they went too far too quickly. As well as raising the retirement age to 67, the reform also includes a 3.6 per cent pension reduction for every year of early retirement.
In response, between 27 (...)
How the Italian mafia makes millions by exploiting migrants.
On 6 August last year, 14 immigrant farmhands in Foggia, on the ankle of the Italian boot, were coming home from a 12-hour shift picking tomatoes in 40C heat. The minibus carrying them was registered in Bulgaria; the driver didn’t (...)
Just before Polish teachers suspended their strike to allow for exams, Philippe Alcoy interviewed Dagmara. She gave us an insider view on the causes of the historic struggle of Polish teachers as well as on the solidarities of pupils and parents. From the French: Celine Cantat.
Dagmara (...)
On April 8th, 74% of schools and kindergardens in Poland went on strike. The strike’s organizer is The Polish Teachers’ Union (ZNP), close to the Social Democrats, but the strikers are also members of the pro-government Solidarność (Solidarity) union and non-union members. It is the biggest (...)
A nationwide teachers strike is underway in Poland. It’s challenging the authority of the church and forging links with the country’s resurgent feminist movement — while radicalizing a growing number of students.
On April 8, staff in over fifteen thousand schools and kindergartens in Poland began (...)
Employees of Audi Hungary in the western city of Györ conducted a successful seven-day strike in late January. It was the AHFSZ (Audi Hungaria Independent Trade Union) that led the strike. The AHFSZ currently has 9,700 members in the plant (72% of the workers) and defines itself as a “union (...)
Germany’s hippest city is debating whether to seize 200,000 homes from landlords and turn them into social housing.
In early March, Germany’s largest tabloid, Bild, proclaimed: “A specter is haunting Germany, the specter of expropriation.”
The exaggeration-prone paper was not entirely wrong: In (...)
This interview exploring Madlen Nikolova, Jana Tsoneva and Georgi Medarov’s recent research on subcontracting, inequality and worker resistance in Bulgaria was originally published on the website of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
Most people probably associate outsourcing and subcontracting, (...)
“Let’s all shout together,” we will not be slaves! “” Let’s not be afraid to tell them, we will not be slaves!“”. Polar cold, but hot atmosphere, Saturday, January 5, in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, where a large parade of about 10,000 people marched from the Heroes’ Square to the monumental (...)
In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which the ruling Fidesz party had already modified in 2011 to the benefit of employers—that made the news. On 12 December, amid (...)
Demonstrations erupted on the streets of Budapest after the Hungarian parliament—controlled by the fourth consecutive super majority of Fidesz government—had just passed three crucial laws in a rapid parliamentary voting on 12th December, which oppositional parties claimed unlawful. The three (...)
From Brussels to Barsa, gilets jaunes have brought visibility to people and their grievances
It started on 10 October, with a Facebook appeal launched by two fed-up truck drivers from the Seine-et-Marne department, east of Paris, calling for a “national blockade” of France’s road network in (...)
Rarely has the Milanese sky and its foggy metropolitan area been so open and starry as tonight. But maybe it is climate change that has also caused this.
Getting up at six in the morning and seeing this sky makes us think that it will be an important, beautiful day, maybe it is a portent. (...)
On November 11 2018 a protest called on the people of Sofia to rise up against the prices of fuel, of the mandatory car insurance and the proposed new taxes to be levied on old cars. The protests quickly spread engulfing more than 30 cities and towns, blocking highways and borders. Though (...)
Repression fell on the RiMaflow factory, place of an emblematic fight. The president of the cooperative, Massimo Lettieri, was arrested and is still in detention, while the cooperative fights to survive. A call for solidarity has been launched.
RiMaflow is located in the declining industrial (...)
The response of unions in Germany to the growth of the platform economy can teach us important lessons about the challenges of ‘platform labour’ as an emerging category in the labour market, and in particular to the limitations of pan-national responses. Problems for national and international (...)
As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth topped $150 billion last week, making him the richest man in modern history, thousands of Amazon workers across Europe went on strike.
The work stoppage, which lasted three days at some facilities, was one of the largest labor actions against Amazon to date, (...)
Global capitalism is a precarious system, relying on the steady flow of goods across the world. When Amazon arrived in Poland, it was attracted by cheap labour costs and strict union laws, little did it know that the high-pressure working conditions it institutes would produce wildcat strikes (...)
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