Polish Pickets Put Persuasive Pitch: Press Play

limerick | worker & community struggles and protests | feature Thursday December 11, 2008 08:37 by seedot

Video interview with Curran strikers

“Anyone passing Roxboro in the last 8 weeks will have seen the workers from Curran Aluiminium standing outside on the Picket Line in the worst of weather conditions. “

So starts the blog entry on Cheebah which is entitled “Striking a Blow”. It links to the same video that is embedded here on indymedia which has started to meander through the Irish blogosphere. Running at 4'45'' the Polish language piece with English subtitles has the story told by Grzegorz Romanski, Robert Grabowski, Marek Witomski and Robert Sawlewicz – some of the workers standing on that picket line.

While the Irish Times tells us 33% of Poles may return home - or at least gives recruitment firm CPL an advertorial to say so - we see that Grzegorz anyway intends to stay, as he is "fascinated by this country".The roll call at the end of this well constructed and informative video are our workmates and neighbours, members of our class who are currently being scapegoated and attacked. When Robert Sawlewicz ends the video by bluntly reminding us he is on the dole, he and his comrades are joined by more than 277,000 others. The SIPTU members in Curran Aluminium are standing on a picket line in Dublin fighting for the right to good jobs in Ireland, the right to be represented by their union, the right to decent, legally compliant terms and conditions. We should remember - the video may be in Polish but this struggle is all of ours.

Apparently the workers are back in the Labour Court on Friday - but the company has already ignored one labour court hearing that went against them so this dispute is likely to have a bit yet to run. While Country Tom and the Construction Industry Federation are happy to rip up social partnership agreements nationally - Curran Aluminium won't even accept the right of their workers to be repesented. And their own representatives in IBEC are happy to fight on their behalf to help them deny these workers the right to representation. Remember, in the current economic climate the only partnerships that matter will be those between workers of all types as they form strong unions.

The Harp, January 1908. Consider, oh, my compatriots, what this implies! That Polack, whose advent into the workshop you are taught to view with such disfavor, if you could trace his ancestry back a few hundreds of years perhaps you would find for him an Irish ancestor who charged by the side of Hugh O’Neill on that fateful day when the English flag went down in disaster at the Yellow Ford.
............
But, you ask me, why this thusness? What has all this to do with Socialism? My dear friend, this is a lecture on Internationalism. Didn’t you notice it before? It is a lecture written in characters of blood and fire in Irish history; a lecture on the mingling and merging and therefore on the oneness and unity of all the races of mankind.
Link to Original Lecturing Article

Watch the video for details

Caption: Video Id: 2468267 Type: Vimeo
Embedded video Vimeo