The local political authorities and the employer in Partille are attempting, in the context created by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic on the one hand and the prevailing war propaganda in Sweden on the other, to use covert tools of repression to divide the united workers’ groups of the city and to separate workers’ representatives from their collective ranks. For this reason, the united workers’ collectives have begun organizing a new round of protests both inside and outside the workplace.
During the recent period, due to increasing pressure from the employer, at just one workplace with more than one hundred employees nearly thirty workers have been forced either to resign or to transfer to other departments. By intensifying harsh working conditions, changing work schedules and working hours, and relocating workers under the pretext of building renovations or “reorganization,” the employer has attempted to suppress the independent struggle of workers and break their organized resistance.
Now a group of care assistants and workers’ representatives, risking their own job security, have organized protests in the workplace and sent a protest petition to the media. Some of them have also contacted the local newspaper to raise their colleagues’ voices against the repression of workers and the lack of freedom of expression in the workplace. The Pedagogical Workers’ Association and the network of workers’ representatives in the city’s healthcare sector have issued a statement warning the local authorities that if this repression continues they will call healthcare workers to a protest gathering in the city’s main square.
Together with other militant groups and workers’ representatives, we fully support the independent struggle of healthcare and municipal service workers in Partille and stand firmly beside them.
Salute to the courageous care workers at the Furulund elderly care center, who by bringing workplace struggle into the media and society have raised the banner of workers’ resistance.
Long live the independent workers’ struggle!
30 March 2022
Internationalist Workers’ Organization – Partille Workers’ Core
