A-Infos (en) Germany, FAU, direkte aktion:WE DON'T PAY, WE STRIKE (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A post about crisis protests and external support options for the current labor 
disputes at Post and Co. ---- Business & Society By: Peter Nowak - February 22, 
2023 ---- On February 10, almost 4,000 mostly young people demonstrated shortly 
before the Berlin repeat election from the climate movement for self-organization 
from below instead of placing hopes in the elections. At the back of the 
demonstration there was also a large anti-capitalist bloc. There was a slogan on 
a banner: "Strike on the streets, in schools and in the factories, this is our 
answer to your policy". "We want to use this to draw a connection between our 
climate strikes and the labor disputes," said a young woman who carried the banner.

This is also the goal of the nationwide alliance Enough is Enough (GiG). It wants 
to support the upcoming collective bargaining battles outside of the company and 
sees allies in the extra-parliamentary left, who have called for protests against 
high prices and rents in recent months. At the first meeting of the GiG alliance 
in Berlin-Neukölln in autumn 2022, left-wing initiatives and employees from 
various sectors who are currently or will soon be fighting wage wars spoke.

At the end of January there was a neighborhood meeting against high prices and 
high rents in the district of Wedding. There, various left-wing district 
initiatives such as the Kiezkommune Wedding and the district initiative "Hands 
off Wedding" (HdW) presented their work. HdW has been supporting union struggles 
for years. Clemens reported on the "Social Work Solidarity Meeting in 
Capitalism", which was founded 3 years ago. Every third Wednesday of the month, 
social workers from all over Berlin meet in Wedding's Kiezhaus Agnes Reinhold. 
The solidarity meeting was initiated by HdW. "Our basic idea was to organize 
ourselves where we work and live. There are a lot of social workers in our group, 
so that's where we start with the organisation," reported Marc, who co-founded 
the solidarity circle.

At the neighborhood assembly, activists from the hospital movement and the 
Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR) campaigned for external support for their 
struggles. One employee at the post office, who described the warning strikes in 
recent weeks as just the beginning, received a lot of applause. In a committed 
speech, she spoke of a high willingness to fight among her colleagues, because 
everyone knows that through her work, Swiss Post was one of the beneficiaries of 
the crisis during the Corona period. But she also said that there are still 
colleagues who are afraid to go on strike. She therefore called on those present 
to support the delivery staff with small gestures, such as solidarity stickers on 
the mailboxes.

A young activist from the climate movement also built bridges to the wage wars in 
her speech. She recalled that already in 2020 members of Fridays for Future 
supported the industrial action of public transport workers. Joint activities are 
planned again next year. The neighborhood assembly made it clear that very 
different groups can cooperate if they prioritize what they have in common and 
not what divides them.

"WE DON'T PAY - WE STRIKE"
In January of this year, activists from the crisis protests founded the alliance 
"We don't pay" in Berlin. Four concrete socio-political demands were put forward: 
the ban on power cuts for people who cannot pay their bills; a cap on the price 
of electricity at 15 cents per kilowatt hour; 100 percent renewable, 
decentralized energy and finally a socialization of the energy industry.

The initiative has set itself the goal of gathering 1 million supporters who are 
willing not to pay the costs for electricity and gas. Almost 4,000 people in 
Germany have currently signed the demands. In Great Britain, where the campaign 
started as "Enough is Enough", there are still over 300,000 supporters. However, 
that is still a long way from the goal of 1 million. Here, as in Germany, it is a 
question of carrying these socio-political demands into other struggles. The 
motto of the alliance is "We don't pay - we strike". So it makes sense to be 
present at the current collective bargaining disputes, warning strikes and 
demonstrations.

 In Jungle World 5/2023, the two topics were treated completely separately 
without drawing a connection between them. Stefan Dietl, for example, wrote a 
very committed article about the looming labor dispute at the post office under 
the heading "The strike front is standing". Two pages later there was an article 
by Gaston Kirsche about the "We don't pay" initiative. However, this only has a 
chance of being noticed beyond the left scene if the connection with collective 
bargaining succeeds. In Berlin there are already good experiences with such a 
cooperation. The wage disputes could become a continuation of the crisis protests.

https://direkteaktion.org/wir-zahlen-nicht-wir-streiken/
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