international

We are informing the public that the State of Serbia is continuing with its repression against our organization. This time in the form of police investigation of ASI General Secretary, Milan Stojanovic, under suspicion of committing a crime of “Motor vehicle theft with burglary, break-in and threat” for which the possible sentence is up to five years imprisonment.  

Namely, in year 2006 Milan was a witness in an investigation held because of the same crime and which was dismissed soon after. Now, five years later, the prosecution has dug up this case, and Milan has mystically changed his role from a witness to accused. To make things even more absurd, Milan cannot drive, actually he has never even started a vehicle. 

This is only a last (for the time being) in a row of framed judicial processes against members of Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative. 

Some workers cheated by the OTTO temp agency are fighting back!

They don't get the conditions promised to them in their contracts and job interviews and the company makes money off a system of fines used at the workers' "hotels". The end result - people work and don't get paid, or they wind up paying too much money for substandard housing which does not meet the standards of the collective labour agreement OTTO is supposed to be following.

After some Polish colleagues working in Holland were cheated by the agency, they decided to take action. The Vrije Bond in Holland, ZSP in Poland and Priama Akcia in Slovakia have all started taking action to both inform workers of their rights and encourage them to organize and take action.

Below is the text of a speech given by a member of our Polish sister organisation, the ZSP-IWA, outside the Eyptian embassy in Warsaw.

The human urge for freedom and dignity burns intensely in Egypt. We support this urge for change, for greater freedom and a chance to shape ones own life. Only we ask the question: what next?

Delegates from the CNT-AIT unions, French section of International Workers Association (IWA), gathered in Toulouse today welcomed the popular uprising of January 14, 2011 in Tunisia.
 

Statement by German anarcho-syndicalist group FAU on the situation of temporary employment in Germany and recent developments between unions and employers' organisations.

The following is a report by our Portuguese sister organisation on the one-day general strike that paralyzed Portugal on November 24, as Portuguese workers fight austerity measures being imposed by the Socialist Party government.

This is the first general strike in Portugal for the last 22 years and that alone should shed some light over the social situation in this country. In fact, class struggle in Portugal is quite low and the number of strikes has actually been falling for the past thirty years, despite the continuously worsening situation of the Portuguese working class. Unionisation rates tend to fall as well, as the two large Portuguese party-run Trade Unions serve more to appease and stall conflicts than to fight exploitation, and that hasn't gone unnoticed.

In Warsaw a rent strike has been going on since Oct.1. Despite the fact that the issues may effect up to a quarter of a million people in Poland's capital city, we cannot say that a significant percent of public housing tenants have joined. This is mainly due to a lack of tradition and the extreme social atomization of the population - something typical in many post-Soviet bloc era countries. There is also the issue of a minuscule grassroots social movement and the disdain of the left for anything radical and outside the realms of reformist and party politics. [1]

As Catalyst goes to press, the Bush-Blair war machine is cranking up. Such time can only bring more misery for millions of Iraqi's and others around the world. The Iraqi people have already suffered for years, from sanctions imposed by the west, adding to the terror they have endured under Saddam Hussain. It is worth remembering that the said dictator had the full support of the west, even when he was openly gassing Iraqi civilians in the 1980s. The truth is, it is all about oil, and the US throwing its weight around in the region.

Imperialism is back with a vengeance. Before the brutal war against Iraq was even over, the US began issuing threats against Syria - clearly, the US government will not rest until the whole of the Gulf region along with its oil is under American control.