Georgia, a small country in the South Caucasus and part of the USSR until 1991, also saw two categories of workers in the so-called gig economy sector come out in struggle in February.

The first to move were taxi drivers from the Estonian company Bolt-which also operates in London, Paris, and Lisbon-who made demands related to their status as self-employed workers: 1) Return to the pre-2023 fare; 2) Reduction of the percentage owed to the company; 3) Compensation for long distances 4) Computation of waiting time; and 4) Opening of an office in Georgia and activation of a 24/7 call center.

Subsequently, since Feb. 5, cyclo-drivers of the Finnish food delivery company Wolt have taken up the struggle, explicitly declaring solidarity and unity with the Bolt drivers. Several hundred of them held an assembly. One of the couriers, in an interview, explained that while prices have increased by 200 to 300 percent, their wages have remained the same. The couriers are calling for a reduction in the radius of deliveries, an increase in wages, and an improvement in insurance, which should cover health care costs, since traffic accidents are also very common in Tbilisi.

Wolt’s management has decided to address the workers with an open letter, nothing more than an exhortation to return to work until the company resolves their problems.

Media coverage of these actions of struggle is minimal and most of the population is unaware of what is happening.

But the Georgian proletariat is showing signs of awakening from the torpor into which it has been thrown by decades of lies, first by the supposed “communist regime” of the USSR, then of the equally bogus one that shows itself to be aligned to the so-called free and democratic world, which is no less anti-proletarian than the former.

The International Communist Party denounces to the workers the deception of the propaganda of the Georgian bourgeois regime, which points to the Russian and Turkish states, along with immigrant workers of the various ethnic groups, as their enemies. The workers’ enemy is the bourgeoisie of all countries, beginning with the bourgeoisie of the country in which they are exploited, and their allies are the workers of the whole world.

Only with the international union of workers - of their struggles in defense of their living conditions, organized into true class unions - can workers prevent themselves from being dragged into the hunger, poverty and war toward which capitalism is leading them.

Georgian workers must take inspiration from the working class neighbors in struggle, most recently in Kazakhstan, in Russia and in Turkey.

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