#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #POLAND #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) Poland, The activity of Youth Clubs of the Workers' Initiative (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

 Nationwide meeting of IP youth clubs in Poznan during the Rozbrat squat (August

2021) ---- Workers' Initiative Youth Clubs are organizations associating socially
sensitive youth from all over Poland. The idea for the creation of these
organizations was born almost two years ago, when the first group of young people
(then still) associated with the Polish Socialist Party, made contact with the
Workers' Initiative after the strike of the shipyard in Swinoujscie. ---- Youth
union committees are primarily teams dedicated to helping workers affiliated to
factory committees throughout the country. This help most often consists in
organizing protests, media coverage of workers' fights and support for strikes.
Youth circles are formed in places where IP Environmental Committees already
exist, and in cities where such committees do not yet operate, young people set
up an environmental committee (this is the case, for example, in Pomerania and
Lódz.) employee groups such as construction workers, employees of the security
industry or Amazon.

The second form of activity are propaganda campaigns - for example, the
commission in Gdansk recently prepared leaflets on the financial situation of the
Losos factory in Ustka and distributed them at the workplace. Support from youth
structures consists in publicizing the activities and helping in employee
self-organization, without trying to act for employees. Due to their specificity,
youth unions also join other, not strictly trade union, social actions, such as
support for the tenant movement fighting against wild re-privatization and
gentrification of Poland. In this field, the activity of youth clubs consisted,
for example, in coordinating actions to connect central heating to municipal
buildings in Warsaw.

Do youth commissions have a specific line of ideas?
As young people organized around the trade union, we recognize that the issues of
specific worldview patches are of secondary importance. The views of our members
differ, but we are united by anti-capitalism and the will to fight for workers'
rights. As young people entering the labor market, we believe that this form of
self-organization will help us in the future by preparing for trade union
activities in workplaces where we will work ourselves.

We believe in the ideas of democracy within the organization, which is why we
make all decisions at regular meetings. The differences in our views give our
groups group dynamics, allowing for a constant exchange of views. The lack of a
specific ideological line goes hand in hand with the lack of rules regarding the
age of members of our clubs - students work hand in hand with high school
students and young employees, thanks to which it is easier for us to direct the
message to the broadly understood "young". This, in turn, allows us to combine
the struggle for employee rights with, for example, struggles for a social
academy, places in dormitories or support for the poorest young learners.

However, we try to ensure that our activities are not activities in the activist
field, but in the field of organizing. Activism is a strongly individualized
approach to the fight for political rights, it involves one actor - an activist
or groups of activists. It is based on the lack of a common strategy for making
specific changes within society, which often results in chaos and ineffectiveness
of such activities. Organizing, on the other hand, is building a local political
movement composed of people who were not previously politically activated
(tenants, plant workers, etc.), who show that they are able to speak for
themselves. We work with those most affected by capitalism and focus on strictly
social demands.

What does our cooperation with other structures of the Employee Initiative look like?
The support we receive from senior trade unionists is primarily education, but
not at the level of the teacher-student relationship. As a youth organization, we
are fully involved in the activity of the trade union, so it is not a
relationship known from the model of the youth and adult party, but rather a real
cooperation. All our pro-social activities go to the account of the trade union
movement.

A beautiful example of how conventional the word "young" is when describing the
activities of the clubs is the situation in September 2021. It was then that one
of the members of the Warsaw IP Youth Circle (Dominik Chrabski) helped legally in
recovering the salary for employees from Ukraine. Dominik dealt with the
preparation of letters and direct contact with the victim, which ultimately led
to the payment of the outstanding remuneration. Another example is the protest of
the security industry in 2021, where female employees also managed to recover
their stolen salaries.

What are the young people currently doing?
The summing up of our activities to date will be the reunion of young people at
the Rozbrat squat in Poznan, which took place at the turn of July and August
2021. In addition to many inspiring discussions (for example, around Michal
Sierminski's book "Cracked Solidarity" or learning trade union practice on the
example of Amazon), further plans of the youth at the trade union were mapped
out. The most important issue was the idea of a nationwide campaign at universities.

As young people, we want to fight for free (or at least relatively cheap and
widely available) canteens, which could become a place of real social assistance
not only for students, but also university employees or any person in need not
related to the academy. It is also extremely important for us to fight for cheap
and well-kept dormitories. The issue of housing availability is something very
problematic for us young people.

Therefore, one of the reasons why we participate in tenant movements is that we
believe that extensive public services, a larger network of high-quality council
housing and an attempt to solve the problem of system housing are also needed by
us, young people. The housing market scares us with boxes that cost a fortune. At
the same time, education, which in principle was supposed to be free, is an
expense due to the high cost of accommodation. Universities do not offer us an
alternative, there are too few dormitories and they do not compete with the
privatized housing market. To remedy these problems, in 2021, we plan to organize
a series of protests and petitions in many Polish cities to convey our needs to
the university authorities.

Acting at universities, we cooperate with the already existing company committees
at universities, e.g. with the Employee Initiative Committee at the University of
Warsaw, which is in constant contact with the local youth circle. We are trying
to restore the social character of youth organizations operating at universities.
Education in Poland is currently another overwhelming expenditure available only
to a few.

A good example of our latest activities is the involvement of all IP youth
structures (from Warsaw, Lódz, Tri-City, Szczecin and Poznan) in the
parliamentary team for youth. He invited the Employee Initiative to discuss
possible new regulations on youth work in Poland. Thanks to the dynamics of IP
activities, it was the young people who represented the union in this initiative,
thanks to which we could talk about our problems ourselves. We entered the team's
work because we demand that politicians provide us with real salaries instead of
scraps for internships and internships. For us young people, the team is a form
of a battlefield, because the representative of the employers' association
Lewiatan opposes our social votes.

We encourage all interested persons to join the activities of Youth Workers'
Initiative Circles!

Kuba Smok Zatonski and Szymon Gams / Youth Circle OZZ IP in Warsaw

https://ozzip.pl/publicystyka/strategie-zwiazkowe/item/2860-dzialnosc-kol-mlodziezowych-inicjatywy-pracowniczej
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