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On the weekend of February 15-16, ZSP held pickets at 4 Dino Supermarkets – in Skarbimierz, Pabianice and Łask. The union protested against various violations of workers rights in the chain and the firing of union activists. Several fired workers participated in the protests.

In Skarbimierz, a couple of people were fired and upon hearing of the campaign, wanted to join in and organize a picket in their town. Activists from ZSP from Silesia went and about 20 people protested in front of the supermarket. Actions were also held in Pabianice and Łask.

Workers at Dino suffer a few main problems: unpaid overtime, health and safety risks and use of short term employment contracts are some of the main complaints. In Pabianice we found a good example of one of the common problems for workers. Two women, one very tiny, had to manually haul a huge pallet of bottles instead of using a fork lift. Complaints about this health and safety risk were supposedly dealt with by Dino; the President claimed that every store would have fork lifts and the employees trained on how to use them. However in many stores the fork lift was delivered but has never been used and the workers have no training. (Operating a fork lift without training is not allowed.) The same was true in Pabianice where the workers are forced to deal with the pallets manually. The situation will be reported immediately.

We also heard that in Łask they had been hiring people for just three months, then hiring new people, to avoid giving normal contracts with benefits.

It occurred to us that probably we should produce a brochure about these matters to hand out to workers in different locations. We have already published information on health and safety regulations regarding the fork lifts and how to evidence and claim overtime pay on our web pages.

During the pickets people were generally supportive and expressed their disapproval of Dino's actions towards the unionists. Some people decided to go shopping elsewhere after discussing the situation with fired workers.

About 1/3 of the members of "Solidarity" in Dino are gone and there are signs that the main activist in the union has signed a loyalty agreement with Dino. We say to workers that a union that does not fight for the reinstatement of their fired members (like that one) is not really a union worth joining. An initiative group exists in ZSP to organize more Dino workers and to fight for the reinstatement of the fired workers, payment of overtime, etc.

Please support our actions by sending a protest mail via the form on this page: dino.zsp.net.pl