Poland - Strike - Urgent support needed for striking miners

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Urgent support needed for striking miners

International appeal from ’Budryk’ workers
Krzysztof Łabądź

The Strike Committee of KWK ’Budryk’, in the name of the striking workforce, turns to all working people with an appeal for help.

Krzysztof Łabądź

Image: wzz.org.pl

Please note an update to the bank details in this appeal - IV

A protest has been underway since 13 December 2007 in the Coal Mine ’Budryk’. This protest began with a hunger strike and on 17 December the workforce took the unanimous decision to begin an indefinite strike. The miners from ’Budryk’ are demanding equal pay to the level of employees of Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa (Jastrzebska Coal Company), which their mine is to become a part of. The miners of ’Budryk’ only want to be treated equally with other employees! Employees of ’Budryk’ have the lowest wages in the whole of the mining industry despite a productivity which is twice as high.

The management board of ’Budryk’ have not undertaken negotiations in the framework of collective bargaining and have thereby broken the law, which has escalated the tension among the mine’s employees. We are turning to all working people with an appeal for support for our protest. We are asking for financial support for the striking miners, who management are trying to force economically to end the strike. We will not give in, the people who can give in are our families and children, who are threatened with a lack of financial means to live. If they break us today, then later they can break you.

Let’s prove that international workers solidarity is not an empty slogan. Individuals and institutions who are prepared to support financially the families of the striking miners are requested to make payments to the following account:

BIC : POLU PL PR

IBAN : PL 23 8454 1053 2001 0041 5426 0001

with the annotation: ’Support fund for families of striking miners of Budryk’

Name of bank: Orzesko-Knurowski Bank Spoldzielczy oddzial Ornontowice

On behalf of the Strike Committee of the Coal Mine ’Budryk’. Ornontowice, 29 December 2007

Krzysztof Łabądź, is a leader of the Free Trade Union "Sierpień 80” in the mine "KWK Budryk". His sacking in 2005, when we was Chairperson of the union’s Factory Commission, provoked an international outcry.