[Protest against abortion ban Poznań 2016]
The government wants more children to be born,
but do they have decent places in nurseries and kindergartens?
We fought for kids to have decent conditions
but the city didn't care about us!
Szydło [prime minister], unfortunately your government
will be smashed by women!
Szydło, unfortunately your government
will be smashed by women!
We are not alone.
The world already knows about it and protests in favor of us
in more than 50 cities of Europe, Asia of both Americas and Australia.
There are almost 20 million women in Poland,
that's 51.6 percent of the population.
We won't be intimidated!
We are not going to submit to the sick law!
We are here for our own cause!
The Women's strike continues
At first, we were seen as 'no one' and treated as objects.
They didn't want to talk to us, and we were pushed to the side.
They thought: "They are only women from nurseries,
what can they possibly do to us, they only look after kids!"
Everything started in 2011 when the Childcare Act was changed
and the care workers' working time was extended [Justyna - nursery worker, the OZZ IP member]
from 7 hours 35 minutes to 8 hours.
We haven't been compensated for this.
We didn’t get any additional time off, we didn’t get a pay rise.
We are angry and disappointed. [nursery worker, member of the OZZ IP]
We have been to the city hall
but don't know where that leads, what lies ahead.
We've started to knock at every door and to ask
what they are going to do with us, what our options are.
At first, all doors were closed in our face.
We got ignored, and they saw us as strange people.
[Katarzyna - nursery worker, the OZZ IP member ]
We wrote a letter to the city mayor of Poznań and stated
that our salaries are very low and we have not received a pay rise for several years.
The city invests in new buildings, they have money,
so why is there no money for us?!
After some time, the mayor replied
and stated that we won't get any pay rise until 2032.
When we read it we started laughing.
We were also in shock, and we thought the mayor was wrong.
The unemployment was rising since the 1990s and hit women first.
Company nurseries and kindergartens were closed with the declining industry.
Until 2005, the number of nurseries dropped by 74 percent.
School day centers, libraries and cultural centers were systematically closed down.
The destruction of social institutions increased the burden of women's care work
which they do for free in the households.
In the past, everything was state-owned, only taxis and farms were private.
They began to privatize and sell everything very cheaply
sugar factories, bakeries... [Mirosława - retired nursery worker, the OZZ IP member]
The plants were privatized and did not want to run nurseries.
The nurseries were at the plant
and the first places were for women who worked in the plant
but they were managed by the health institution.
- Children from outside were also accepted.
- But, first of all, the children of workers.
- Like in the tobacco plant?
- Just like in the tobacco plant.
[Silvia Federici - activist from the Wages for Housework movement]
Women's reproductive work, what we generally call housework,
is the work that reproduced, historically and to these days, labor power.
It's the main source of the reproduction of labor power.
It's work that, basically, reproduces the workforce
on a day-to-day basis, and on a generational basis.
Clearly, from the beginning of capitalism to the present
unpaid labor has been a major source of capital accumulation.
Unpaid labor through slavery,
and later through women's unpaid reproductive work
has been a major source of capitalist wealth
in that it has reduced the cost of labor.
It has, basically, enabled capital,
particularly in the case of women's reproductive work,
to appropriate an immense quantity of work at very low cost,
and, at the same time, it has succeeded
in reducing the cost of all labor,
of all forms of reproduction.
Fundamentally, in the case of women's housework,
women's unpaid reproductive work,
this has been the engine, this has been the instrument
for the reproduction of the workforce.
Devaluing that work, making that work unpaid,
has been a fundamental condition
for keeping the cost of all work very very low.
Did you get the payslip?
- I got a payslip today.
How much did you get?
2,732 zloty before tax (650 euros).
- How much is it after tax?
It's 1,928 zlotys (459 euros).
- I got 3,192 zlotys (760 euros).
- You get more than me.
- But I have been working 28 years.
- Oh my god, almost 30 years.
- How much did you get without the seniority bonus?
- 2,280 zlotys (540 euros).
- Shit, after 30 years!
- I remember the beginning when we started to talk about our salaries.
We could hardly make ends meet.
That year, there was a football championship in Poland.
The city invested, for instance, in renovation work and the stadium,
and in transport infrastructure like the Kaponiera roundabout etc.
to make itself attractive.
And people did not get any wage rise, including the nurseries.
Previously, I had worked in retail,
with long working hours but a higher salary.
I hoped that I would have a permanent job at the nurseries
and my life would be more stabile.
I would feel more secure.
I was wrong, actually.
I have a permanent contract and insurance, and I can pay the bills.
But I don’t have enough time for my private life.
Generally, people don't talk about it,
but in this sector
three quarters of my colleagues
have a second job ...
... just to live a normal life.
Because our salaries are not sufficient.
They often do black work or get part-time jobs.
They take care of other children, clean homes, or look after older people.
There you earn as little money as in the nurseries,
so, in other words, we work two jobs to get one salary.
When I was employed in a nursery
my 17-year-old daughter was in a coma after cerebral tumor surgery.
She required rehabilitation, and I had to take her to the treatment facilities.
And there were still two jobs to do.
Then I collapsed.
What kept me going was that I am single and I have to support kids.
However, I had no time for my personal life.
Many times I had to choose between school meetings or work.
I tried to be at school meetings
but in my purse I had 70 zlotys (15 euros).
I had to go to work to get cash into my hand
to be able to afford food and pay bills.
Look at this old notebook from 1979.
We used to have a wage re-evaluation every year.
Then they froze our wages,
and for two years everyone was waiting,
but 2 years later there was still no re-evaluation.
- The football stadium was built.
It was during the European Championship in 2012.
In general, there was great emphasis on sports.
Grobelny [mayor] and Frankiewicz [vice-mayor] were crazy about sport.
Since there were no pay rises, we started to...
... our salaries dropped quite a bit.
Janka, what did you do?
Honey I am going out, will you fall asleep?
Capitalism structurally, necessarily, is built
upon the devaluation of reproductive work,
the devaluation of life, the subordination of life
to profit and the market.
In fact, women have been the shock absorbers of so many crises.
When the wage becomes precarious
often those who compensate with extra work are the women.
Women are at the breaking point.
Women, now, have a work outside of home,
often have to take care of their kids,
they still do a lot of housework,
and often they have to take care of their parents
or, maybe, the parents of their husbands.
So you have a tremendous amount of housework still on the shoulders of women.
Many women will tell you that they are at the breaking point.
Their life is a continual crisis.
No time for themselves, no time for their recuperation.
The wage workplace has not changed.
Actually, people are expected to work even more and for even lesser pay.
After the authorities failed to notice nursery workers
and we were neglected and ignored
we were desperate.
We decided to fight so that the hard work
with the children would finally be noticed.
[Picket in the city hall/ Poznań 2012]
We started to participate in city council sessions,
we started to be interested in the city budget.
As more people joined our group
we thought about how to attract more attention.
[We want nurseries to be cheaper!]
[Blockade of tramway crossing/ Poznań 2011]
We organized ourselves
and sat on the tracks
at the access point to the railway station
We just sat there
and demanded our rights.
It was widely covered by TV and newspapers.
The authorities started to discuss with us
but it didn’t have the desired effect.
[Family and Social Policy Committee/ Poznań 2011]
This year the city does not expect any wage increases in principle.
- But, Mr Mayor, I would like to refer you to what you have already said...
Do we have to...
- The Social Policy Committee is not the place
where the issue of salaries can be raised.
That's not what this is about.
Do you expect the workers to enter into a collective dispute
before we discuss anything?
In 2011, we established the union section
in order to formally discuss with the authorities what is going on in nurseries,
what our work looks like.
At the beginning, the councillors were shocked by the fact
that there were 40 children in the group,
that there was constant noise, screams, cries.
You have to be focused all the time,
keep an eye on the whole group.
If a baby has high fever
the caretaker must know what to next.
Once we were refused an ambulance
for a child that had shivers and symptoms of sleep apnea.
These are very stressful situations for us.
We need to know how to react, what to do when a child falls and cuts itself.
Children also have different genetic defects.
After we established the union section, we entered into a dispute with the employer
to fight for higher wages
and equipment needed in the workplace
like disposable gloves, window cleaning equipment...
This has helped us in discussions with the authorities,
and also the management began to take us seriously.
Two weeks ago, we sent our employers a letter with our demands.
They did not answer, so we are now in a collective dispute.
We heard that a pay rise would cause redundancies.
As a trade union we do not agree.
We want higher salaries but not at the expense of people.
We plan various forms of protest.
- A strike is the last resort of collective bargaining.
That is an option we are also considering.
1,580 zlotys (370 euros) after tax a month after I have been working for 6 years.
I have a university degree, I am a nurse and a teacher.
Are you amazed?
We organized a number of actions to raise awareness about who we are.
[Budget session/ Poznań 2012]
We organized various pickets and protest actions.
We are disadvantaged in terms of income, and we need a 30 percent increase.
We won't accept anymore that there's no money in the city budget, there is money!
If there is some for certain professions or for the stadium,
please, do not tell us that there is no money.
We no longer want to pay the cost of the city's debts and the stadium construction.
Educating small members of our society for nothing or almost for nothing,
and the division of labor that is determined by these priorities
in the budgeting and the management of the city
is clearly defined by our authorities:
Men are invited to the stadium, women are supposed to change nappies,
and work for almost for nothing.
We were on the picket line in front of city hall,
at the unveiling of the Christmas tree.
Each time the mayor Grobelny saw us,
he loudly commented: "You are everywhere!"
Yes. We are everywhere.
- We were often invited to television and radio, we flagged nurseries.
- We pushed the city to support parents
financially and with the fees.
We highlighted more problems than just ours.
Many groups sympathized with us and these friendships continue to this day.
Many parents ask about our activities, what we are going to do.
Among the parents are medical workers
who are now protesting, so we support each other.
[Flagging of nurseries/ Poznań 2012]
[We want to live with dignity]
[We demand higher wages]
In 2012, we organized a very big demonstration in Poznań.
That year the Euro 2012 championships took place in Poland.
We demanded: "Bread instead of games!"
Because not only are the care sectors unnoticed
but there are plenty of other people like us in the whole city.
[Bread instead of games]
Parents who give their children to the nursery
have the opportunity to go to work and make some money.
But such huge spendings for the stadium...
It was a one-time event.
Everything was done quickly and more money was put into it and more again.
Once for the turf, then again for the turf, and again,
because it was rotten, because it did not grow, because it was too yellow.
And we continued to earn scraps and still do.
When you look at the question of reproduction,
when you look at what we call housework,
domestic work,
and put it in a broader context,
and we look at it as part of what is the reproduction of the workforce,
when we look at it in that context,
then you see all kinds of different possibilities.
Then you see that the issue of reproduction
is central to every point of production.
At every place where there is work
the issue of reproduction is important.
For example, one of the stuggles women have engaged in in the past
but they are still today,
is you go to work, well, if your wage workplace provides day care,
can you take your kids to work?
And how is work organized once you go there
so that you can also have children there?
Or how else is the question of day care going to be solved if you have children?
This is one issue.
Second, the question of the house.
If the house is, in fact, part of the social factory
that produces the workforce
then what does it mean that we have to pay rent for it?
What does it mean that we have, in fact, to pay a tremendous amount of rent?
Why can't we say, look, you employers are benefitting from the work
we are doing here.
And, therefore, we have a whole set of entitlements
around the question of rent.
I think, the rent... looking at the home as a factory
for the production of workers
gives us new ways of thinking also about the struggle about housing.
I think that this is a perspective that is very important.
to look again at all so-called points of production
and realise that the home is a point of production, too.
And when we go to work outside the home
we carry on our shoulder all the issues.
If we have children that are ill,
if we have elder parents who are not self-sufficient,
all these questions, we don't just leave them behind us when we shut the door,
they come with us.
And the wage workplace has to be changed to accommodate to this issue.
This is the struggle, because otherwise it destroys our lives.
We've been fighting for over 6 years.
During this time, we managed to achieve a lot.
We forced the authorities of Poznań to increase the number of places in nurseries.
We stopped the liquidation of the kitchens operating in them.
We also blocked the project of the privatization of nurseries.
In 2014, the newly elected city mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak
promised us a salary increase of 700 zlotys (165 euros).
In the last 3 years, our salaries have increased by only 400 zlotys (95 euros).
Every year, they tell us that because of other budget expenditures
it would be impossible to meet our needs.
- The mayor offered us 100 zlotys (24 euros).
But that's nothing for us.
The authorities explain that they are making a lot of investments in our city.
[Iza, Dorota, Lidja, Renata, Romana - nursery workers, the members of OZZ IP]
A lot of money went to the reform of education.
There would be not enough money for us, we would have exorbitant demands.
- Not only we are in this situation
but museums, ZAMEK Culture Centre, theaters, libraries...
Lots of people say that our marginalization - and we are almost all women -
looks like the discrimination of women.
- You are not flexible enough.
- The mayor is not flexible enough.
It should be taken into consideration that, unfortunately, our work does not end here.
You go back home and also work.
They don't want to give us money.
The authorities always say that they can't do that
although they pay themselves huge salaries.
We are going to organize protests.
We will occupy the city hall.
I don't know what next.
We'll take sleeping bags, coffee, sandwiches, we'll fight.
They must find money for us.
[Protest in the city hall/ Poznań 2017]
Now, the authorities are more willing to talks to us,
and they try to get along with us.
Maybe they think that after these meetings
we will be softer and no longer fight for a wage raise.
Local officials have misled us for many months.
Finally, together with other unions of public employees,
we filed a petition, demanding what we were promised.
We are organizing this action because the talks
with the city and the mayor did not go anywhere.
We will strike if we manage to do it.
We are unsatisfied with the fact that the mayor didn't show up to talk to us.
The mayor escaped, he doesn’t care about us.
He didn't want to talk to us, he sneaked out like a rat and ran away.
He said he had other duties, something more important
than 9,200 workers who demand a wage increase.
We demand decent wages and shorter working hours
because we work with very small children, difficult children.
We want to reduce the number of children in the groups.
40 children in one group is like in a storage room.
We can't take good care of children under such conditions.
So we demand higher wages, shorter working hours and fewer children per group.
Whatever we do it makes sense,
regardless of whether it's a big or a small step.
It's worth to fight
because we fight for our own interest,
we fight for a life in dignity,
we don't fight with greed but only to get by.
We also fight to improve other people's lives.
[A nursery is not a storage room]
At the beginning, it was hard for us because of all these actions and pickets.
We were forced to open up to the media, to society,
we had to become hard-headed women who stubbornly pursue their goal.
We also realized that what we do is important
and must be appreciated, and that they must realize what is important.
It should not be the case that if there are pots and nappies in kindergartens,
women may do this job just like that.
I would say that reproductive work is the most important work,
the most indespensible for the capitalist organization of labor.
Without workers there is no production for the market.
Without workers there is no profit.
Just think about what it means
an expanded population from the point of view of capital.
The expansion of capitalist relations is already provided
by the growth of population.
This is the reason why capitalism and capitalist society
have always tried to control the female body
to control, for example, abortion,
to control reproduction, procreation, the forms of procreation.
Because this is very much part of the formation of a labor market
these are activities that are very instrumental
for the formation of the workforce.
[March 8 demonstration/ Poznań 2017]
[No compromise. Against state violence] [We resign from service at home and work]
6 years ago we said it is enough, and we set up a trade union section.
We lay down on the tracks as to get attention,
and we wanted the buildings back for the youngest children.
Workers' rights, yes! Sisterhood, yes! Women's strike, yes!
Yes, yes, yes!
Thanks to our activities in the work units
the working and living conditions in the city have improved.
We demand a change in social policy and influence on the city budget.
We resist when politicians and businesses seek to marginalize
the so-called women's sectors, such as education, social welfare, or culture.
This is our response to starvation wages, high rents
and a ban on abortion that limits our access to public health.
We fight against women's oppression
in workplaces and continue to do so outside their walls.
We engaged in the fights so deeply
that we started to support Manifa [March 8/Women's Day]
and the "Black Protest" [against abortion law amendments].
These demonstrations are not only about abortion and the body,
but also about the fate of women.
Because women in this country do not have a voice.
A woman works all her life.
When she is young she learns,
she meets her boyfriend and cares about him,
they have children, she goes to work,
some of them study, and she still does domestic work.
Women's whole life is like that.
When they want to decide how they want to live,
how many children they want to have, the authorities ban it.
For me, this is a shame.
In my head it doesn't make any sense,
the fire in me is burning, it wants to explode.
I would take the guy who is responsible for it
and hang him on a hook, this is the only option.
Same for children with disabilities...
Why do most women became single with such children?
Men often leave us.
Why are such fathers not forced to take care of them?
They pay the minimum alimony and that's it.
Throughout her whole life, the woman works 24 hours a day.
She has to cook for the child, take it to rehab in hospital.
On average, disabled people live for 45 years.
For those 45 years a woman is at their disposal around the clock.
There is no vacation, leisure, free weekends, she only works.
Where is equality? It does not exist!
And someone from the government will tell me
that knowing that my child will be sick I am still obliged to give birth?
No, this is my decision, my conscience.
I want to decide whether I want it or not.
We women feel bad about what they do to us.
We have problems with health care,
and they do not take our expectations into account,
for example, in the case of abortion or caring for pregnant women.
What to do? We have to organize ourselves in our work units
and start to fight for a better life with full force.
We should set up trade unions, we have to get together,
otherwise we will not accomplish anything.
No one appreciates us, not even the mayor,
but because we have support from the union we can fight.
We can bang on the mayor's table
and there is no excuse that he will not talk to us.
We are strong, resilient, and we will keep fighting.
I want my doctor's office to be free from human rights' violations.
I want my patients to be safe.
I want a medicine based on knowledge, not beliefs.
Until today, we have fought for a lot more places in the nurseries,
we have a better job, more opportunities to take care of children.
We are strong, we are unified, we are organized!
We will decide ourselves about our lives, the lives of our daughters and sisters.
You will not destroy us and you will not make us a slave of one party.
I am begging you all women,
don't allow them to leave us handcuffed,
don't let the government plan for and rule over us.
We don't care about your law,
and this means that we will not obey it,
and we will do everything so that no one will fall prey to your cruelty.
We don't care about you and your sick law,
we don't care about this country, we don't care about your law.
This is a warning strike, this is a warning strike
It was a strike, a warning strike,
Now, it's time for a general strike It was a strike, a warning strike,
Now, it's time for a general strike
On October 3rd 2016, thousands of women took the streets
in 140 Polish cities.
They protested against the bill prohibiting abortion.
Spontaneous demonstrations were organised
under the slogan "Women's Strike".
In Poznań, thousands of women went to the office of the ruling party,
where there was a confrontation with the police.
In the end, the nationwide protests were successful.
The government withdrew the project pressured by women’s protest.
Women’s power did not appear out of thin air.
At its source is organizing in the worker’s union,among others.
Nursery school workers in Poznan have been fighting over 8 years
for higher wages and better work conditions.
Besides the workplace,they also organized the Women’s Social Congress.
That was their response to Poznań city government’s anti-women politics.
The congress created a list of demands,
which joined women workers fighting for better work conditions
with women tenants fighting for general access to housing.
The list includes the demand to shorten working time,
to plan working time according to the needs of workers,
to increase wages at public institutions,
to increase the number of spots in public nurseries
and the development of public housing.