Picket at Headquarters of Plaza Centers and on Site of Torun Plaza

On Sept. 23, activists from ZSP visited the main office of Plaza Centers in Warsaw concerning the situation of workers building the Torun Plaza shopping mall in Torun. The workers are not being paid on time or their full salary. We wrote about the working conditions here. 


Despite the fact that our group was very calm and peaceful and when entering the office, we were met immediately by an extremely nervous and panicked person who didn't want to hear why we were there or take some information from us and immediately started calling the security. Such a frightened reaction to our friendly visit makes us suspect that they knew why we were there and that the workers in the office are, for some reason, in a panic. Whether it could be because of the string of people they owe money too is hard to guess.

We posted some leaflets on their doors and the corridor and decided to leaflet the workers coming to the building. But first we stopped at Ford headquarters, two floors below to deliver a protest related to the workers of Visteon Cadiz Electronica. Although it was already after 9:00, nobody was there to let us in. (Or they saw us coming and ran away.) So we left leaflets for them as well.

Workers at Plaza Centers were happy that there situation is getting more attention and that news about the protest in Warsaw was related in their local press. They are considering what to do next. In Torun the workers are deciding what to do with their situation. The next day, on Saturday, there was a meeting and leafleting action with ZSP and workers on the construction site. Some of the unpaid workers have stopped working, some continue to work in the hope they will get paid. We spoke about the need to actively confront the situation, not passively accept it, which is unfortunately too common in Poland. What we mean by that is that people who are very pissed off tend to quit instead of organizing themselves and fighting. There are some that would like to do that and we understand that there are plans for further action.