Workers Solidarity Movement

Marcel Szary, an activist of Workers' Initiative Trade Union in Cegielski factory, died . He was  one of the founders of the union. It is a huge loss for the syndicalist and workers' movement in Poland.

Marcel Szary was an extraordinary union and worker activist. During the communist regime he was a member of underground “Solidarnosc” union, he joined it when he was still going to school. After 1989 he did not agree with the compromise politics of “Solidarnosc”  and he gave up the membership in the union. In June 2004 he was one of the founders of the Workers' Initiative committee in Cegielski factory. He was a representative of the workers in the board of that factory. He was one of the most significant and active activists of WI. He was a friend of the anarchist movement, for which he became  a symbol of workers' struggle.

We  are going to remember Marcel as an uncompromising activist, who always put the interests of workers and the union members  over his own. He was often repressed for his activity and in 2009 he was fined by the court in Poznan. We are going to  remember his passionate speeches, his unbelievable sense of humor, the fact that he always offered a helping hand. When Workers' Initiative  activists from Poznan were distributing leaflets in front of the factories in the area, we were sometimes called „the Marcel people”. Today, in the face of his death, we are sure that it was an honor to know him and fight for a better world with him, and we are proud of being called after him.

In 2007 Marcel  was diagnosed with leukemia. Being ill, he was still struggling as a union activist. In December 2009 the doctors said the disease had reversed. Unfortunately, not for long. In late February 2010 he was back in the hospital, where in the last days of his passionate life, he got involved in the struggle in defense of the nurses of the hospital. Two weeks ago, his condition drastically worsened.