Cleaners and kitchen staff from Belchatow Hospital will start an indefinite strike on Monday, November 3. The action was called due to the fact that several people on sick leave lost their jobs. The women were workers with disabilities and part of the ZSP union in the hospital. The company servicing the hospital, which employs these women and about 100 other people in the hospital continued to cut staff and in all, 30 people lost their jobs. The rest of the workers decided to join the strike and on Monday, 140 people will walk off the job. The Director may have to evacuate the hospital.

The members of the ZSP union won their jobs back after the last service provider did not accept their transfer. They spent three months unemployed, occupying the hospital and protesting. Finally, a new public tender was held for the services and the women were rehired. However this company also is trying to cut the staff and force the rest of the workers to take on their tasks. The average working time in the hospital is 200 hours per month. Workers with disabilities are entitled to a 35-hour work week.

Various problems occurred when some people took sick leave or wanted to take leave for rehabilitation. (All of the women in the ZSP union have some sort of disability.) Although it is illegal to fire people on sick leave and people with disabilities must not be forced to do a lot of extra work and must be given time for rehabilitation, the price for doing so could be their job.

On Oct. 11-12, an international conference was held in Bratislava, Slovakia, devoted to problems in the workplace and improving organization. The first day was a public conference where different organizations presented their activity and ways of working while the second day was devoted to discussing how to improve our organizations.

The public conference was entitled „Problems at Work?”. This conference was meant in part to highlight Priama Akcia's „Problems at Work” campaign, which is meant to get more people involved in workplace struggles and into contact with the organization. Representatives of four organizations gave presentations: the Most Solidarity Network from the Czech Republic, Priama Akcia from Slovakia, ZSP from Poland and Solidarity Federation from UK.

For the past year, the our comrades from the CNT have been in conflict with the above companies which outsource IT workers to avoid direct contracting for Santander Bank and some other firms. ISBAN is owned by Santander Bank and is used to avoid direct hiring. In this way, about 10,000 workers are forced to work in more precarious conditions. Our comrade from the IT Workers Union in Madrid was fired after calling
attention to the problems and trying to organize.

The CNT organized actions around Spain and the IWA around the world. A few other organizations and comrades also took part in solidarity actions that were held in 15 countries.

We understand that the solidarity actions did a lot to help! We have been informed that a resolution has been reached in the case of the individual comrade and that the economic compensation is much greater
than normal. We are sure that this is a result of the solidarity campaign.

After more than one year, our comrade has already moved on to another city and other things. Therefore, he decided he would not like to return to his old job.

We can consider this to be a personal victory for the worker, but the larger problem in the company remains. Our comrade IT workers in Spain are fighting in general against these types of working conditions and we wish them the best in their struggles.

Our comrade points out that he is very happy that the results achieved were due to direct action and international pressure. He hopes that this conflict can serve as an example of our way of working, which is
based on solidarity and show that the IWA is an effective tool for workers who want to fight against multinational corporations.

We thank all the comrades who have shown solidarity in this case.

Just one day after the banker's death, the International Workers Association and affinity groups call for dozens of boycott actions against Santander Bank, Isban and Panel Sistemas in Spain, Germany, UK, Portugal, Argentina, Poland, Mexico and Norway.

The trial for wrongful dismissal is set on the next September 29th in Madrid. Whatever happens, direct action has shown to be the working class's strongest weapon along the conflict.

A CNT union section was formed in Isban-Santander Bank on August 19th, 2013 at Madrid. This group of precarious workers denounced illegal trafficking of staff from Panel Sistemas to Isban.

More than 10,000 workers around the world are affected. They are not considered Isban workers, although they work for Isban in its facilities, with their tools and under their managers' orders.