In July, in Georgia of the Caucasus, 1,700 workers employed by the company Evolution, a Swedish company that operates worldwide offering services in land-based and online casinos, went on strike. It employs 16,000 workers, and Georgia has the largest number of employees, about 7,000. Many are migrant workers from countries such as India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and others.

The company is known for its poor working conditions. Wages range from a minimum of 800 Lari (the Georgian currency introduced in 1995 by the government of former USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze) to a maximum of 1,000 Lari, which can be achieved only through the receipt of bonuses for which additional time and health must be sacrificed. The average salary-officially stated-is 1,100 Lari (at today’s exchange rate about 410 Dollars or 370 Euros). The wage situation has been exacerbated by inflation in recent years. The sanitary conditions of the workplace are equally terrible. Treatment by middle and upper managers is in line with this situation: before the strike, screenshots of managers’ chats were circulated showing their racist, sexist comments, in which they mocked workers by making jokes about their appearance and even their health.

The workers are organized in a union formed in the company just over two years ago, called Evo Union, which is part of a union federation called Labor that organizes mainly workers in the agricultural sector but recently, under the leadership of a new young and energetic leader, Giorgi Diasamidze, has expanded to other sectors. Since 2018 Labor has led several strikes, often victorious.

Labor is part of the Georgian Trade Union Confederation (GTUC), founded in 1992 after national independence in 1991, the result of the dissolution of the USSR. It continues the tradition of state unionism of the former supposadely socialist regime, not defending the interests of the working class but submitting them to those of corporations and capitalism in general. It is a corrupt organization, headed personally by Irakli Petriashvili, elected five times. It claims 250,000 members.

The Evo Union has made a variety of demands. Among the main ones are: a 100 percent wage increase; pegging of wages to inflation; a permanent medical garrison at the main workplace in Tiblisi; food vouchers and healthy food; and paid leave during menstruation.

Initially, the union followed the legal process for calling the strike, seeking to resolve the dispute at the labor court. After the mediation period ended unsuccessfully, it declared the strike, which began on July 12.

Other unions, especially those formed outside the GTUC, actively expressed solidarity with the current strikers. The most active has been the deliverymen’s union, which was engaged in a major struggle last year that we reported on in our Italian, English and Turkish periodicals (iPC420, TCP51, KP3), whose militants have constantly helped the strikers, including with food and water, and joined our comrades in suggesting more aggressive and determined measures to the union.

The start of the strike was a little hesitant, which, for example, did not allow the full effect of the denunciation of management behavior resulting from the circulation of insults to workers contained in their private chats. Only 4-5 union militants were involved in organizing work and this was not enough.

As soon as the strike began, the company took various countermeasures, from circulating rumors about the closure of its operations in Georgia, to placing fences around union stands at entrances to workplaces.

Since August 1, union action has become more incisive, organizing sit-ins in front of the workplace entrances, forcing those who wanted to enter to climb over them. Some members of bourgeois left-wing parties spoke out against this decision, asserting that it "divided the workers". Instead, the action was successful, discouraging more workers from going to work. At its peak, the strike was joined by 1,700 workers, but many others, totaling about 4,600, while not declaring themselves on strike, absented themselves, by agreement with the union, asking for leave of absence or placing themselves on sick leave.

On the morning of August 3, the company declared that the union was illegally blocking the building, leaving no way in; for the entire month of August it would more easily issue bonuses to workers who were not on strike; for each shift of attendance it would give an additional payment of 20 Lari; and it would impose a warning for each strike shift (after 3 warnings the worker is fired).

After that statement it rounded up 600 shift workers urging them to overcome the chain of sitting strikers and even trample them. However, this arrogance of the management backfired: only about ten went in. The company also hired a dozen new guards who attacked the workers, sending one worker to the emergency room. But most of the guards actually sided with the workers, obeying company orders slowly and unwillingly, basically ineffectively.

After that failure, the company relaunched its threat to close or downsize the business. It sent all workers an email asking them, if they intended to continue working, to fill out a form. It then canceled the night shift on August 3 and the morning shift on August 4. A brief lockout. Then resumed activities but at a reduced pace. This action began to have a negative effect on strike morale which, having peaked in early August, began to decline.

On August 8 the company hired new guards, bouncers in clubs and festivals called the "Zonder brigade", known in Tbilisi for being openly violent. Their first action tried to disrupt strike committee elections that were taking place in front of Evolution’s administrative building.

From that moment the union leaders began to call for help from all kinds of bourgeois parties and politicians. In general, they reacted to the decline of the strike by promoting actions that could be described as liberal, unrelated to the methods of class struggle, ineffective and individual in character.

On August 13, several union militants began a hunger strike. Our comrades tried to dissuade the workers from taking such an initiative and proposed to try to involve other workers in the struggle, but they went unheeded.

Since August 15, it has been decided to hold "surprise" sit-ins without notifying the company and police which entrances would be manned. The company hired additional guards, bringing the number to 150.

On August 19, the union leader stated that if the company continued to fail to respond to the workers’ demands that evening at 8 p.m. the union would organize a demonstration and block the road. Police were promptly mobilized to the scene at 6 p.m. and their numbers matched those of the strikers and solidarity workers. The police warned that if they blocked the road they would arrest the workers, and the union desisted.

This development generated some discontent among the strikers about the conduct of the struggle.

The company recovered from the initial slaps and spent considerable resources against the strikers, sowing discord among the workers and demoralizing all those who sided with them. Anti-strike propaganda aims to marginalize striking workers, to present the strike as an individual choice of an irrelevant number of unjustly disgruntled and uncivilized employees. The fake social media accounts and professional lackeys of capital are "influencers" who spread disinformation and use arguments as foolish as they are effective, echoing the dominant ideology. They target strikers, attacking their integrity, painting them as liars and troublemakers who violate others’ right to work and act against their fellow workers. The voluntary and amateur action of workers cannot compete with the social media propaganda machinery that the company can afford, and unfortunately, at the end of the day anti-worker disinformation efforts get more results than pro-strike propaganda, which is natural given the strikers’ lack of resources. The strength of the workers’ struggle lies not in counter-information but in extending the struggle, in breaking down the boundaries between companies and categories. Locked in the individual company, day after day even the most determined struggle is worn down and defeated. To this end, the strike must be well prepared already with the aim of not limiting it to the single enterprise.

On September 7, the "Zonder brigades" ravaged the strikers’ tents, taking away chairs, tables and other tools.

Since early September, in response to complaints about the line of conducting the struggle, the organizing group has been expanded. A day of mobilization was promoted for Sept. 21 to revive the strike.

Despite its limitations and flaws, the strike went better than expected, led to closer contacts with militants of other unions and represents a wealth of important lessons for the continuation of the working class struggle in Georgia.