On Oct. 11-12, an international conference was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, devoted to
problems in the workplace and improving organization. The first day was a public
conference where different organizations presented their activity and ways of working
while the second day was devoted to discussing how to improve our organizations. ---- The
public conference was entitled "Problems at Work?". This conference was meant in part to
highlight Priama Akcia's "Problems at Work" campaign, which is meant to get more people
involved in workplace struggles and into contact with the organization. Representatives of
four organizations gave presentations: the Most Solidarity Network from the Czech
Republic, Priama Akcia from Slovakia, ZSP from Poland and Solidarity Federation from UK.
The comrade from the Most Solidarity Network presented the ideas behind that organization
and told about a few cases that they solved or are currently involved in. Some interesting
videos were shown. For example, they told about how they were fighting for unpaid wages at
Rizkarna restaurant in Prague or about the successful campaign to get payment for a worker
from Zepter. The latter was supported by Priama Akcia in Slovakia - a good example of
international cooperation!
Priama Akcia presented some information about some of their successful campaigns and acts
of international solidarity. The main focus of their presentation was on the current
"Problems at Work" campaign, where they are encouraging workers who want to do something
about their workplace problems to contact them with a view towards taking direct action.
Having seen the posters around the city, two workers decided to come to the conference and
speak to the comrades about their current work problems. Hopefully some good contacts and
some concrete action will come out of that.
Members of the Brighton Hospitality Workers from Solidarity Federation presented their
campaign in the hospitality sector in that city. They spoke about the situation of the
workers, succesful conflicts and showed a video about one of the campaigns, explaining
what they did and how they won the struggle.
The ZSP presented a bit about how the organization works and what kinds of methods it uses
during work conflicts. They showed some videos and photos from different actions related
to conflicts they won and explained a bit about why these actions were successful. They
also explained a little bit about the most common workers' problems in Poland, which they
are fighting against.
The second day of the conference was an internal discussion about typical problems that
anarchosyndicalist or other organizations face. Besides the above-mentioned organizations,
a delegate from Vienna Workers Union (WAS) took part in the discussions. A list of
discussion topics were sent in advance. They included: how to earn trust of workers and
build the organization, how to improve internal organizational issues such as the rotation
of tasks, activating new members and geographically isolated ones, problems which can
occur with mainstream and other unions which want to operate in the same area, etc. There
was a lot to say about each issue, so in fact, some topics were not covered due to time
limitations. The organizations involved asked each other to send opinions on the other
topics, if they have any.
In general, all of the organizations involved agreed that there were a lot of interesting
things to learn at the conference and such events are worth organizing and attending.
Organizations from the Central European area spoke about the possibility to make different
events in their countries and perhaps to try to do this on a regular basis.
At the conference there was also a chance for people working in similar jobs/ workplaces
to meet each other and discuss building contacts and spreading information about the
situation in their branches.
The IWA Secretariat thanks Priama Akcia for its initiative and good work organizing the
conference .
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