Cases where people contact us about unpaid wages end in different ways. Sometimes they become an open dispute (mostly successful), sometimes the issue is resolved before open dispute, and sometimes the issue is not resolved at all or communication from the workers does not continue. The following article covers almost all the mentioned scenarios that we encountered since last year's International Week Against Unpaid Wages in various cities across Slovakia It is worth noting that most them were related to hospitality and almost all cases affected women.
The International Week of Actions against Unpaid Wages started off with an action by ZSP at a Zabka convenience store. The situation concerns one worker who was cheated in two ways: by being denied the correct payment for work on Sundays and holidays and by having illegal deductions made from her salary. The sum amount of the wage theft amounted to 5688 zloties or 1170 euros. We went with a letter to demand that this money be paid.
Is your boss owing you money? Do you want to get involved in actions to improve workers’ conditions, not just for one week of the year and not just about the issue of unpaid wages? Let us know. The International Week Against Unpaid Wages was established in 2019 by the International Workers` Association (IWA) to highlight the phenomenon of unpaid wages and the possibilities to fight back using anarcho-syndicalist methods. From 10th to 16th October, we will draw attention to this issue in various forms.
The year 2021 was mainly about developing contacts in the regions, solidarity activities and participation in public events. We also won another conflict and supported several workers with their workplace problems. We took part in actions against the climate crisis, coordinated the International Week Against Unpaid Wages and hosted the IWA Plenary and Extraordinary Congress.
We are happy to announce that, as part of the International Week Against Unpaid Wages, we prepared an English version of our pamphlet related to our workplace conflicts between years 2015 and 2019. The publication called "How We Coped with Problems at Work. Conflicts of Priama Akcia Union in 2015-2019" provides a detailed description of conflicts in all their stages. It contains photos from actions, interviews with the workers, leaflets and a short analysis of hospitality sector where most of the conflicts took place.
This was our fastest victory so far. It took just eight days from a collective delivery of a demand letter for the former veterinary hospital worker to receive the money in her account. Same as in our last case in 2019, we succeeded before the conflict went into the public phase, since the boss paid the amount owed within a deadline. We are thankful to all people who came out to support the worker during the letter delivery and wanted to join the planned solidarity campaign! In this article you will find more information about the conflict and an interview with the worker.
The situation of a de facto "sanitary dictatorship" and a ban on holding public demonstrations, like last year, force KRAS to refuse to hold any street actions, including within the framework of this campaign against non-payment of wages. In these conditions, we limit ourselves to disseminating information about conflicts related to non-payment of wages and about the experience of resistance and to promote the current international campaign.
In October 2020, ZSP published „Fighting Back”, a longer article detailing various examples of how the union has fought against different types of wage theft. (The article is available here in English: https://zsp.net.pl/files/ZSP-IWA-against-unpaid-wages-2020.pdf) The article was written to precede the International Week of Action against Unpaid Wages which the IWA held from October 12-18, 2020. It was decided to repeat the week of actions again, this time from October 11-17, 2021.
Below you will find an annual recap of our activities during the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Parliamentary elections and pandemic-related campaigns, solidarity actions, two new publications on workplace struggles and anarchosyndicalism, International Week Against Unpaid Wages in Slovakia and abroad. And more.
