Workers Solidarity Movement

Amsterdam, Geneva, Cologne, Seattle, London, Washington, LA, Prague. What do these cities have in common? In the last four years they have been the site of a new phenomenon, the Global Protest. For decades, the organisations that manage capitalism have met to divvy up the world among themselves. For the first time, their role as dealers of poverty and misery has been exposed by thousands of angry protesters. The symbolic value of these protests cannot be under estimated. If only for a brief period of time, a few days here and there, people have come together to say 'Enough!'.

If you've ever owed money to a bank, you'll know it's not a pleasant experience. Depending on whether they think you're good for the money, the bank will either screw you in the short term or milk you dry over the longer haul. Banks are in the business of making money and generally they'll stop at nothing to get their way.

The Czech anarchist organisation Solidarita/Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists is working as part of INPEG, the Czech alliance organising the protests in Prague this September. In October one of their members will be speaking in Ireland about these protests. Vadim Barek, Solidarita's international secretary explains what the IMF means to workers in the Czech republic and why they are organising against the summit.

They are the sort of deaths which rarely merit more than a passing reference in the mainstream media - a battered ship which sinks in the Mediterranean, a stowaway found dead in the cargo hold of a ship or plane, a nameless asylum seeker who takes his/her life, no longer able to take the pressure in one of the EU's many 'detention centres'. Now and again, as with the 58 Chinese people found dead in the back of a truck in Dover in June of this year, the cases are so horrific that they cannot be ignored. Then they become big news for a day or two only to sink off the political agenda just as quickly.

Competition or con

Ireland is the 19th most competitive country in the world

IRELAND IS THE 19th most competitive country in the world. This was the finding released in September by the Geneva based World Economic Forum. Yet workers in TEAM, Irish Steel, the ESB, and a lot more jobs are told that they must accept lower pay and/or worse conditions in order to "become competitive".

The ten most competitive countries were listed as

In recent months, over 1,500 workers at TEAM have been made redundant, a mass laying-off that dwarfs those at Digital and Irish Steel. We find out why...