A-Infos (en) Poland, WORKERS' INITIATIVE: Congress of Women - Social or Neoliberal? Department: Trade union strategies [machine translation]

Radoslaw Sto. The text was written by the initiative group of the Social Women's Congress, 
appeared on the web page dailynikfeministyczny.pl ---- In recent days, it has become loud 
around the Congress of Women in connection with the case of security workers. Although the 
employees employed by Congress were women of flesh and blood, the organizers did not treat 
them as a nephew - if the orders to stand at attention and insults "idiots, idiot" we do 
not consider typical relations in a woman's family. ---- Both the disclosed working 
conditions of people employed at the service of the Congress, as well as the public 
reaction of the organizers of the CC, are difficult to consider as exceptional. Modern 
models of work management in companies often force the illusion of family loyalty. Harder 
work is to be done "for the good of all", "dirt is washed at home". Organizing around your 
own interests and fighting for decent conditions is suppressed as an act to the detriment 
of a joint company whose profits are no longer shared together. In the majority of such 
companies, the bosses and bosses treat employees and employees of the lower level 
similarly to the employees of KK protection. What is unique in this story is that these 
employees have decided to oppose and speak. The struggle for their rights, i.e. labor 
rights, had to fight with the organizers of the Congress, who allegedly fights for the 
rights of all "sisters" in Poland. The above dispute, in our opinion, is part of a wider 
problem: KK has many dimensions - among them there is also a strictly anti-social 
dimension. We do not undermine the huge work of many ordinary determined women in 
organizing this event. However, we are indignant as this work is appropriated for 
anti-social purposes.

Over the last 10 years, the Congress of Women allowed the organization of panels about the 
situation of employees alongside discussions about veganism and even the healing role of 
magnets. KK decision-making circles have not yet dealt with improving the economic 
position of the least-paid workers. Despite the fact that KK gathers a multitude of women, 
its basic, programmatic message shapes the shadow office. It consists of min. activist of 
the Confederation of Lewiatan, or an organization associating employers, who consistently 
fights for the weakening of the role of trade unions, deterioration of working conditions 
and cutting social security. Minister Teresa Kaminska - the president of the board of the 
Pomeranian Special Economic Zone is responsible for internal affairs. The minister of 
foreign affairs is the president of General Electric. The owner of Solaris Bus is 
responsible for the infrastructure, for gender equality - the chairwoman of the 
Supervisory Board of Allianz Bank Polska. And so on. If the Congress of Women came to 
power, his ministers would create the most pro-business, neoliberal government in the 
history of the Third Polish Republic. He would have a promil of public support. Such a 
social base would also have feminism in the version of Congress, if it were not 
embellished with panels of precariat or bio-magnets, deprived of influence on the Cabinet 
of Shadows.

Consequently, Congress is fighting for the interests of the best-placed women associated 
with large business and influential political circles. For this reason, feminism is 
sometimes associated in Poland with parities in supervisory boards, professional 
activation regardless of pay conditions or a glass ceiling (blocking promotions), but not 
with a fight for higher wages and lower rents.
Both in the past and in the context of recent online discussions, the organizers of the 
Congress are doing a lot to hide the contradiction of interests between businesswomen 
focused on increasing profits and employees or tenants who often struggle for physical 
survival. Congress appeals for sisterhood, solidarity, the necessity of dialogue between 
women, and at the same time his ministers from the Shadow Cabinet support a policy that 
aggravates the situation of workers' households. In our opinion, it loses credibility.

So far in the dispute between the KK organizers and security guards, the 
ministry-presidents of Lewiatan, Allianz and the Special Economic Zone are silent. In 
exchange, in the defense of the good name of the Central Committee, the public voice is 
taken up mainly by members or congress sympathizers associated with the left. Agata 
Szczesniak, Agnieszka Grzybek, Magdalena Sroda alternately accuse us - organizers of the 
Social Congress of Women - that we are breaking up the unity of women, pitting a poor 
Congress and supporting PiS. Their sensitization to the lack of unity among women is 
either selective or completely ignored by the most influential figures of Congress. One of 
his faces, the president of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, during the speeches at KK at 
the turn of the year used to point out that "Warsaw is a woman". "We are as brave as the 
Warsaw Mermaid. I wish that we would live well in Warsaw! " If the unity of women is taken 
seriously, it is the best moment to add: "in my city, brave sister Jolanta Brzeska was 
brutally murdered fighting for good living conditions." Waltz, however, did not use the 
KK's pulpit to appeal for solidarity with Brzeska to reach the ears of representatives of 
the US Congress, politicians from Europe, the duchess of Saudi Arabia, and regular guests. 
Magdalena Sroda, however, does not accuse President Gronkiewicz-Waltz that at the Congress 
she lost many chances to take PiS's initiative away. Reprivatization in Warsaw is still 
gathering its harvest, on the first front of the fight there are women associated, among 
others in the Warsaw Association of Tenants - they co-create the postulates of the Social 
Congress of Women. Instead of supporting them and influencing the Cabinet of Shadows, 
confronting KK ministers with these postulates, Szczesniak, Grzybek and Sroda limit their 
public role on the left and in the Congress of Women to pointing out to us - the trade 
unions and tenants' organizations - adventurism and disruptive activity. This role is part 
of the tradition of the Polish left as a façade that beautifies neoliberal projects. It 
also widens the huge gap between the postulates of the Social Congress of Women (announced 
in March this year) and the series of demands of the Shadow Cabinet at the last liberal 
Congress of Women.

WSL organizers - tenants of extremely expensive current apartments are struggling with 
debt, frost and poisonous fungus. High bills condemn them to more intense work, women from 
their districts live 5-10 years shorter than women in the elite Warsaw Wilanów. In 
addition to immediate connection to the municipal heating network, members of the Social 
Women's Congress demand real electricity subsidies or strong price reductions. The 
minister of energy of the liberal Congress of Women and former member of the board of the 
PGE corporation, Elzbieta Matuszewska, is lobbying for a reduction in electricity prices 
for entrepreneurs. The elite ministers apparently do not deserve serial employees and 
pensioners as privileges of the elite.

The parliamentary lobby of the Congress is silent about reparations for the victims of 
reprivatization. In the same way, the Shadow Cabinet remained silent for years when the 
government and the president of Warsaw transferred a total of nearly two billion zlotys to 
the beneficiaries of this procedure, forcing a series of social cuts to hit women and 
children. For example, the privatization of school canteens in the capital has taken 
stable employment for cooks, and on poorer mothers, it required more free work at home. 
Today, the president of Warsaw - one of the important faces of the Congress - decided to 
block bad compensation for reprivatization for Magda Brzeska, daughter of Jolanta - a 
murdered WSL activist.

Will Grzybek, Sroda and Szczesniak ask their friends from KK to convince Gronkiewicz-Waltz 
to change this completely antisocial decision? Or will they be satisfied with the knight's 
defense of the Congress's good name from the "wichrzycielkami" from the WSL and the 
Employee Initiative?!
At the turn of 2017 and 2018, the City Hall in Poznan protested against the feminized 
local government sector, in which hundreds of people took part. President Jacek Jaskowiak 
did not keep his previous promise, which was to guarantee a pay rise by 400 zlotys. 
Jaskowiak decided that women employed, among others in the care sector, social welfare or 
culture can wait. The National Congress of Women did not prevent him from granting him the 
prize of diversity, describing him as a proctor's policy. A few months later, the 
Wielkopolska Congress of Women recognized him as a leader in the promotion of equal 
opportunities for women and men.

We have no doubt that the leaders in terms of promoting equal opportunities are actively 
and organizing in Poznan (but not only) local government employees. For years, they have 
been fighting with successive presidents of cities, now with Jaskowiak, that their wages 
should be even if they pay their average wages in Poland. They actively participate in the 
Manifa, and from 2016 also in black protests, thus building a grassroots feminine 
movement. Their salary can not be compared with the incomes of the Wielkopolska Women's 
Congress supporting Jasiek. Promoting the neoliberal solutions that they stand for strikes 
women by maintaining the lowest wages in feminised occupations, the lack of social 
security, the lack of municipal housing, crèches, canteens and non-school activities, etc.

Employees of Poznan nurseries associated for 7 years in the labor union Employee 
Initiative are struggling to shorten the time of the press, improve health and safety 
conditions, a fairer pay structure, but also to increase the financing of the care sector, 
including the development of public care institutions. KK Magdalena Sroda, belonging to 
the shadow cabinet, said in her entry on Facebook that the Workers' Initiative is a 
Bolshevik organization. More than once we have heard this kind of opinion from the right 
wing, for which everything left on Opus Dei is Bolshevism. However, for the first time we 
hear it from the "feminist". Contrary to Sroda's claims, that our identity was shaped by 
mixing with the mud of the Congress of Women - our identity shaped over the years against 
the exploitation and humiliation of men and women from the elite of business and politics. 
An example of such a humiliation was a letter from the previous president of Poznan that, 
for the employees of nurseries, "according to the financial forecast, there are no hikes 
in 2012-2032". Our experience shows that elitism represented by politicians and Magdalena 
Sroda is the last thing that the women's movement needs in Poland.

Over the last years, the Congress of Women has become a symbol for us to push Polish 
feminism into business and politics. Thus, such feminism became alien to the working or 
storage environments. Undoubtedly, the Black Protests and the Women's Strike began to 
change the face of Polish feminism: both the language and the nature of the demands 
(strike, denial of work) and its class composition changed, as the working women and small 
towns that were not participants of the feminist movement were massively on the streets. .
This wave and the involvement of activists in the movement of tenants and employees, who 
themselves saw that women are often on the frontline of grassroots organization, led to 
the formation of the Social Congress of Women. It was initiated by Poznan nurseries, 
cultural institutions and tenants from Warsaw and Poznan. We wanted to expand the fight 
for higher wages and lower rents, which we have been rolling together for years, find 
common points, exchange experiences, learn from each other.

Regardless of whether men or women rule us, the current form of democracy does not defend 
us against work, which often changes our lives into a nightmare and a high price that 
forces us to work even harder. We do not want to be on the open market, we do not want to 
be businesswomen or deputies. We want to realize our needs on our own, not business needs. 
If the Congress of Women continues to be influenced by neoliberal positions, it will 
remain hostile to working people, regardless of their gender.

As the initiator of the Social Women's Congress, we are ready for a public debate about 
the nature of different varieties of feminism and our postulates in the light of the 
demands of the Cabinet of Shadows of the Congress of Women.

http://ozzip.pl/teksty/publicystyka/strategie-zwiazkowe/item/2393-kongres-kobiet-socjalny-czy-neoliberalny
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