Nowhere in Europe is the working class held on such a short leash: Interview

It’s time to stop punishing people for spontaneous strikes in Poland. A legal act from the martial law period makes Poland a hotspot for cheap work force in the EU. We publish a full version of an interview with Bartosz Kurzyca from Komisja Krajowa Inicjatywy Pracowniczej (National Committee of Workers Initiative) and Katarzyna Kiwerska from Konfederacja Pracy (Confederation of Labour) who was fired from Dino.

Translation of the interview published in Gazeta Wyborcza 30.08.2026 (Związkowiec: „Nigdzie w Europie klasa robotnicza nie jest trzymana na tak krótkiej smyczy”)

Kasia Bielecka: Why are there so few strikes in Poland?

Bartosz Kurzyca: Legal restrictions are the main reason for this, unbeknownst to the rest of the EU countries, they tie the hands of workers in Poland. Trade unions work under the regime of the Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes from 1991. It originates from even older times of martial law. These regulations were implemented by the apparatus of Wojciech Jaruzelski in 1982 with the Trade Unions Act.

KB: Striking before that wasn’t regulated, I guess.

BK: As indicated by dr Piotr Krzyżaniak, a lawyer and unionist, until that time striking wasn’t legally regulated in Poland – it was one of the workers’ freedoms in form. Not in Poznań in 1956, Szczecin in 1970, Łódź in 1976 and even in august of 1980, was the government able to prosecute people for striking.

KB: So, they prosecuted them for acts of vandalism for example…

BK: That’s why in august of 1980 the striking people demanded the right to strike to be regulated in a manner which it would guarantee safety and lack of repressions for the participants. It was stated in the 2nd postulate of Solidarność (Solidarity). In martial law Jaruzelski accomplished a backwards realization of that postulate: he replaced freedom by law with a series of duties and restrictions, therefore inventing a definition for a lawful and unlawful strike. It was supposed to guarantee, that the series of strikes from august 1980 would not repeat. It’s a huge paradox, but right after the transformation the political elites form the Solidarność camp basically copied the law established by Jaruzelski and pasted it to the new Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes.

KB: Much has changed since the 90’s. For example we don’t want to be – at least declaratively – „a pool of cheap labor”.

BK: In 1991 the new government had its own business in keeping the restrictions. Shock therapy required avoiding a successful wave of strikes. They took Jaruzelski’s legal act. He’s called the father of polish capitalism for a reason. The fact that striking was restricted proves Karol Modzelewski’s thesis that Jaruzelski paved the way for Balcerowicz.

Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes was a shield for a series of reforms, which spread wide unfair employment contracts (“garbage contracts”), outsourcing, serial privatization and the collapse of big workplaces, weakened positions of workers in workplaces. These reforms sparked the biggest wave of strikes in this political system. Over a million workers ceased work in nearly 14 thousand workplaces between 1992-1993. Workers started a huge occupational strike in FSM in Tychy in 1992 against handing over the assets of a state-owned enterprise for a pittance. They organized it on the model of strikes in dockyards in 1971 and 1980, not based on the “strike law”. Over 20 thousand people took part. By the account of historian Dariusz Zalega its impact on worker movements in Poland was a real threat to systemic transformations of Balcerowicz. The establishment decided that the methods and demands of the striking people were illegal. Addressing the demands to parties other than managements of specific factories became unlawful. In the end strikers didn’t stop Balcerowicz’s plans, with great help from criminalization of spontaneous strikes by general Jaruzelski. To this day the Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes guarantees keeping Poland as a pool of cheap labor for the EU. Our chances of a legal strike are even smaller than they were in 1991.

KB: How so?

Katarzyna Kiwerska: Let’s take Dino, which has over 3000 shops in Poland, as an example. People work different shits, don’t see each other every day. Organizing a lawful strike and gathering the required votes from half of the employees from the entire country is practically impossible.

KB: It’s absurd that you can’t strike in one of the 3000 shops, no matter what the conditions are, without collecting all the votes.

KK: That’s not including the human factor – employees don’t have the guarantee of safety. In small localities, where Dino and Kaufland are thriving, there simply aren’t other opportunities for work in retail. Unions are basically non-existent; people don’t know their rights. Employers prey on this lack of knowledge, lying to the crew, intimidating them with false claims that warning strikes are illegal and taking part in them means dismissal. So, the people are afraid. Even if they feel that something wrong is happening and they would want to fight, eventually they give up, because they don’t have the strength or even a guarantee from the government that they won’t be laid off.

KB: Let’s put things in order. In Poland to legally conduct a strike first you must conduct negotiations, then mediations. It often happens that in the meantime employers question the legality of a union and draw out the mediations. This is just the beginning of a strike procedure…

BK: And we’re not even talking months – Solidarność in Stokrotka markets alarms that the procedure takes over 2 years already, so even the demands for a raise become outdated. The requirement of strike referendum with at least 50% attendance is the biggest absurd. In traditional factories like Jeremias or Valeo unions won the referendums in the last year despite their bosses treating this as an occasion to sabotage. Workplaces are often spread throughout the whole country like Amazon warehouses or thousands of Dino shops being subjects of the same corporation with the same KRS number. Winning such a referendum is physically impossible. Even if a single warehouse crosses the threshold of 50% it cannot strike if the sum of the votes in Poland is lower. By doing that, the government gives employers and specialized law firms precise tools to paralyze a deserving agreement and the betterment of conditions. Let’s remember that half of the votings for the Polish parliament also didn’t reach the 50% attendance  

III RP (3^rd Polish Republic) banished protests outside factory gates. Instead of ceasing work, people in Poland are permitted to demonstrate on the street outside working hours, which is often mislabeled as striking.

The government and business care little about demonstrations.

KB: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the most recognizable strike in Poland is the Women’s Strike…

KK: The lack of real worker strikes gave way to blurring of concepts. Everything in Poland is a strike, in name only. Every protest, each demonstration, even though they don’t mean a real refusal of work. It’s a huge loss. Women’s Strike showed us how difficult it is for a demonstration to succeed, even if they are en masse, in a situation in which the wheel of profit keeps on turning. Now imagine we’re not talking about hundreds of thousands of women, but about workers from a small municipality which are protesting bad working conditions. How are they supposed to accomplish their goals? Who will support them?

BK: Demonstrations can have merit, of course. What of them if you still have to work even overtime. Let’s be frank: if we can’t cease work, we don’t have an impact on working conditions and even less on the trajectory of the country. Businesses and the government know that with time we’ll lose energy. But not a single entity is indifferent when people cease work. Polish people in PRL (Polish Peoples Republic) showed well how we can use this tool. That’s exactly why the ruling elites of III RP took them away so ruthlessly.

KB: When the current government was amending the act about mobbing it boasted about finally maintaining order with an outdated act, which had… 20 years. We are talking about an act that is 35 years old.

BK: And throughout these 35 years the polish government remains the single most important union-buster, which helps employers take advantage of workers even more. Today a leftist minister of labor tries to help unionists in their problems, which are directly resulting from the copy-pasted Jaruzelski’s law. There still aren’t any plans to change it.

Even worse, today the polish government is in fact financing union busting law firms by allowing businesses to put their shady work into business operating costs.  By milking the country these law firms are noting higher incomes than the factories hiring them. Same as in the US, but there Congress is processing a so called No Tax Breaks For Union Busting Act. The polish left and the government are doing nothing in the matter. With such harmful law each intervention by PIP (National Labor Inspectorate) or a minister is like a plaster on an open wound.

KK: Employers use this law fully. What’s more the government stood by their side for years. We know for a fact, that Labor Inspectorate imposed such small penalties that employers like Dino or Kaufland could easily put it in their budget. 1300 zł (around 300 €) is nothing for them. These corporations know very well that polish law works in their favor because a strike is very hard to achieve. Despite all this, we as Dino workers, managed to do it. We organized a warning strike, and more markets took part than we imagined, which resulted in a pay increase of 300 zł. Worker’s pressure works but they need strong tools like regulations which will enable usage of their constitutional rights.

KB:  Laws regarding striking are more favorable for workers in other countries?

BK: Only the 2-hour warning strike is exempted from referendum in Poland and its success in Dino shows, that people in this country are ready to fight on. But then the government throws the boss a lifebuoy and says in the voice of Jaruzelski: NO.

Act on the Resolution of Collective Disputes is truly unique. It’s often said, “Look how the French can fight, and we’re here sitting quiet”. Nobody takes into account that the French law doesn’t criminalize striking workers.

KB: Meaning?

BK: At one of the meetings of Amazon Workers International we asked warehouse workers from other European countries what are their requirements for striking.

In France workers can organize a legal strike even spontaneously with two people. They go to the manager and say “We cease work because you took away our helper, and now we’re doing the work of 3 people. You get 30% more income, and we get a tangerine with dinner”. Manager’s only duty is to check if they aren’t destroying the workplace or if something doesn’t burn. Negotiations become serious because they come as a result of a strike.

KB: I guess that France is seen as a country in which striking law is – at least on paper – relatively far reaching. Are there other examples to follow?

BK: In Germany mandatory referendum applies only to the union itself, meaning that before striking they have to ask members if this is the right time for it – is the union ready to handle and finance a strike, etc.

Polish law is one of the strictest in Europe. Nowhere else are workers kept on such a short leash. If you have one specific demand, work in a traditional factory and the employer is simply denying talks, you still may be able to go through the procedure and plan a strike when it hurts the most.

But imagine 21 demands in a big retail chain. By the time we get through all the required steps, part of the demands becomes outdated, many workers will quit and union leaders will have more and more legal trials behind them. This procedure is so long and complicated that in practice it takes away the ability to use strikes as an effective pressure tool.

Global corporations know very well how to utilize this.

KB: Poland is famous in Europe for being the safe place to “export” striking peoples’ work.

BK: For example, Amazon can weaken strikes in western Europe by outsourcing priority orders to Polish warehouses, where organizing a legal strike is much harder. In a sense Poland becomes the union-buster for the entire EU.

KB: The decision of the International Court of Justice, which recognized strike as part of trade unions freedom became a hot topic among people dealing with labor law. Does it change anything for unionists in Poland?

BK: Yes, the ruling is unequivocal – after years of disputes in the environment of the International Labour Organization the ICJ judges declared strike as a trade union freedom. Regulation of strike depends solely on the inside laws and regulations of a union.

It’s the government’s role to guarantee safety to use this freedom. You can’t put draconian restrictions around it like it’s done in III RP. That’s exactly what the Polish demanded in august of 1980.

KB: The ruling was issued in May which coincided with the 35-year anniversary of this unfortunate act.

BK: Union lawyers with support from ICJ may argue that all these Polish “stages of conflict” and prohibition of making specific demands is basically breaking labor laws.

What’s interesting is that in the 80’s MOP (International Labour Organization) heavily criticized Jaruzelskis’ decree implementing these restrictions. Because Poland ratified this convention. But after the fall of the communist bloc employer representatives began questioning in a so-called Committee on Standards of MOP if the convention about union freedoms (nr 87) guarantees a right to strike.

KB: The Court’s ruling went largely unnoticed in Poland, only a select few labor lawyers took interest. Is there a chance that the MOP decision will spark amendments to the act?

KK: The Hague Tribunal gives us some fighting ground, but I don’t think that it could solely influence the Polish government. That’s why we try to put pressure as trade unions. The law team of Inicjatywa Pracownicza (Workers Initiative) translated into a draft law demands originating directly from Polish workplaces. From different unions: Konfederacja Pracy (Confederation of Labour) in Dino, Solidarność (Solidarity) in Stokrotka, Sierpień 80 (August 80’) in Valeo, or our experiences in Amazon, Zalando, Jeremias. We have an agreement above union colors.

Our global project fits into the content of the ICJ ruling. We want to abolish restrictions that are baseless under international law. We agree with other central offices on two things: we need to abolish the referendum with a 50% attendance requirement and free strikes from the terms of this unfortunate act.

KB: You even wrote to the Prime Minister about the cause. Did he write back?

KK: We sent an open letter to Donald Tusk on May 1^st. If we’re in Europe and the PM often references European values, it must be acknowledged that we have the same stomachs as Germans and we deserve the same rights. The Ministry of Labor wrote us back instead of the PM, saying that they see the problem with the outdated act because they often intervene against attempts to hinder the dispute. They promise to include the voices of unions and ICJ if they proceed to change the act.

KB: Did I miss something? There are no plans to change the act.

BK: That’s right. The government doesn’t plan to change the act. That’s why we formed a cross-union committee for a legislative initiative in September, encouraging people to support and help gather votes under this grassroots project, so that the government abolishes Jaruzelskis’ law. We support the struggles in Dino and other worker initiatives that reveal the problem with this law.

It’s clear to us – we don’t have democracy in Poland if we don’t have it in our workplaces. It is hardly surprising that, in our country, there is a growing preference for strong-arm rule—and that a boxer has become president.

KB: What’s symbolic about it?

BK: When people feel they have no agency in their workplaces—because penalties for bosses are laughable, labor law exists mostly on paper, and strikes are prohibited—they pin their hopes on someone else breaking this systemic deadlock for them. People look for a „sheriff” who will step in and take action, even if it’s just by wielding a fire extinguisher.

For 35 years, the state has been shaping such sentiments among its citizens precisely by stripping them of agency in their everyday lives—specifically in the workplace, where we spend the majority of our time. When we win a strike, we begin to believe in the power of the collective.

Yet, for the vast majority of business owners and for Tusk himself, independent trade unions and the freedom to strike pose a greater challenge than the likes of Braun or Mentzen. There is no point in waiting for the authorities to grant us any favors; instead, let us support one another, transcending political affiliations, and build the power of the workforce againt these bad laws. Ultimately, no strike is inherently „legal” or „illegal”—it is simply either won or lost.