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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Real. solidarność is not even an yellow union, it's anti-union. During 15 years after its victory Poland was deindustrialized, deunionized and had its already flimsy labour law not even applicable for 50% of jobs. solidarność still exist as the biggest "union" and mostly does things like supporting PiS, doing all possible manner of church servilism and sabotaging other unions.
Well damn, didn't know that. Mostly Polish people tend to be glib about the goings on of Poland proper, mostly because the ones I've met get defensive and are just generally dismissive of ideas like joining a local union without actually properly telling me why they're hesitant.
In my country Polish labourers have kind of been abused as a workforce, but they kind of seem okay being abused as a workforce - when they're not in deep argument over the phone with their agencies. But even then, instead of actually organising in any way, they just accept their fate so to speak, acting all tough, when getting less in the negotiation process and worse contracts generally.
It's gotten to a point where I think employment agencies should be illegal, because they serve more or less as labour "handlers", trying to screw over pretty much anyone, and even technically breaking the law sometimes, all to save their clients (the actual employers) a buck. Trying to withhold overtime, vacation pay, sick days, etc.
This has also lead to a race to the bottom, whereby no youngsters in this country wants to work construction anymore. It's all been cost cut and widdled down to a point where only foreign labour wants to work in those conditions. That's bad.
I'm not against foreign labour, but using foreign labour to manipulate and subvert the local labour market is not cool, and again, I'm not blaming Polish people. I mean get the bag, lol.
But still, greedy asshats are at it again. What's the next market they're gonna fuck up? Who knows?
Also, I'm hopeful for the political turn of events in Poland ^^ I'm not that fond of liberals, be they neo, classic or "social democrat", but I think it was about time to take the PiS out of Poland.
What's your take on Tusk and the new government?
In Poland there is mostly no choice anyway, unions only exist in state owned workplaces and big private, plus also in the administration. And often it's the solidarność which have way closer ties to boss, local PiS bonzos and priests than to workers. Therefore often the choice is to antagonise the boss for basically nothing and end up even worse just with extra steps or just eat the shit up but retain the job. I think the historical trauma after solidarność also lingers still.
Sure. We are on both ends of that stick actually. I remember around 2013+ the job market was finally getting a bit better, largely due to lots of people going to west EU for years, and of course local porkys started to grumble loud that they are forced to raise wages and give people some benefits or maybe even employ them on real contracts instead of trash gigs. And when year later, Ukraine had a coup and started to hit their people with yet another round of shock therapy causing massive economic emmigration, voila! Polish govt drastically lowered all formalities and restrictions for them (while at the same time very loudly protesting against few thousands Syrians which EU wanted to place in Poland) which resulted in 2+ million Ukrainians immigrating to Poland with expected result of social dumping.
Tusk is undobtedly better than Kaczyński, since he's more pragmatic and realistic, but still he's the absolutely old neoliberal vulture, worse, a successful old neoliberal vulture, along with Kaczyński those two are the most veteran politicians on the top of Polish politics (Kaczyński is longer in it but he got significant period of being ousted in the 90's).
This is of course very low bar, and i expect the harsh austerity, but i at least hope they won't try any funny meddling in the Ukraine war.