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Warsaw University outsources its cleaning work and at the campus on Zwirki and Wigury St., a company called EVER is used. Before the last public tender, EVER employed 18 people there; until last week there were only 11 and these people, all with disabilities, had to do the same work as 18. However, this was not the only problem: a new supervisor came who started to harrass the workers, using insulting and discrimatory language and constantly harrassing them.

The cleaners decided that they would like to organize and do something about this situation. The bosses of EVER wrote some contradictory things to the Warsaw union – on the one hand claiming the workers were „lying”, on the other hand claiming they are looking for a resolution to the conflict. The day after we received this letter, repression started against the workers in the form of splitting them up and sending them to work in different places, despite the fact that many had worked in the University for years. We consider this a typical union-busting move.

Many of the workers went on medical leave due to the stress of this bullying and repression. The demands were to stop the harrassment, bring back the workers to the original workplace, fire the mobbing supervisor and hire more people.

It should be noted that hiring more people is no real cost to EVER because in Poland, workplaces supported by PFRON – which provides subsidies for hiring people with disabilities – cover up to 75-90% of the workers' salary. In other words, taxpayers are paying these salaries – not the companies supposedly hiring them.

On December 13, employees of EVER who worked at Warsaw University's ZW Campus held a protest. The security of the university forced the workers off the campus. In addition, EVER sent some shady „psychologists” to the campus. These „doctors” corned a group of workers who were on the way to the protest with signs they had made. Apparently the job of the „psychologists” was to scare and manipulate the workers. It was unclear what they did but they put pressure on a group of workers to meet with the psychologists. They also came out to the workers at the protest and ordered them (not asked) to come meet with them. So clearly, the „psychologists” were part of the harrassment process and they tried to signal that the workers needed „psychological counselling” because they were protesting. This was extremely insulting so everybody, so we decided to make our way back on campus, despite the heavy security which had earlier thrown the workers out.

A representative of the University came out, but he was even worse than the witch doctors, barking some things at the workers and refusing to talk to the union. However, in a statement made to the media, they claimed that they would try to get EVER to solve this problem and may reconsider cooperating with them. EVER on the other hand claimed in the media that when it learned about the accusations of mobbing, it sent its „psychologists” to do an audit and „did not discover any problem”.

Needless to say, we were disgusted by the attitude of this company, its treatment of workers, its exploitation of workers using public money, its denial of the problems and its use of witch doctors to try to manipulate and intimidate workers. The workers want to continue protesting and as a union, we warn other people about what is going on in this company.

At the same time, the government held a conference on Wednesday devoted to amending the Labor Code in relation to mobbing. We plan on offering ideas about how the law can be improved – including extending protection to workers on civil contracts (which is a large number of people currently not protected), removing such firms from eligilibity to win state and local government tenders and receive subsidies from PFRON, etc.