7 The "winners" of the Worst Employer of the Year Award, were announced yesterday in Warsaw. The competition was rather hard this year, with about 150 nominees to choose from, sent in by angry workers. Special notice was given to two firms with the largest amount of employees writing in: bank PKO BP and Empik, Poland's largest chain of bookstores.

Mobbing, unpaid overtime, discrimination, arbitary whims of the boss - these were the most frequent complaints of the workers. But some complaints were much more serious that others, or we found so outrageous that they made their way onto the shortlist. The winners of this year's contest were:

3rd place - was the firm Heko from Poznan. The company is involved with waste disposal management. Despite the fact that it is run by a woman, on of the biggest problems in the company is sexist discrimination. The women who wrote claim that women at Heko are especially singled out for inquisitions on their personal life and mobbing is common. And there was one thing which inspired us to give Heko this award more than anything. Apparently they are ultra-paranoid about having to pay for maternity leave and "interested" in what women are doing with their bodies. In order to spy on them and assess if anybody might be hiding an early pregnancy, the management has been known to go through women's things, including their purses... and to go through the women's toilets in search of used sanitary napkins after women have used them. This we found quite outrageous, so we gave Heko third place in the contest.

2nd place - was not a single company, but a person, Kamila Chorostecka, the owner of some bars and fast food restaurants in Wroclaw. Apparently Kamila likes to impose fines on the workers for all nature of infractions. Although certain contractual penalties may be legally imposed on workers, what she is doing is illegal and, by piling on loads of fines at the end of the month, she gets herself suckers who have worked a month or sometimes longer for practically nothing. In other words, she finds lots of excuses not to pay workers. A worker may get fined for putting a sweater on over a short-sleeved shirt, which she wants people to wear, despite the fact that it is cold and people even have to work outside. Or there may be a fast food where there is service inside but tables outside. The worker, who may have to serve the whole place by him or herself, may be, at the same time given two contradictory orders: don't leave the place inside unattended and don't leave any things on the tables outside..Leaving the post to clean the trash may be subject to a fine, as well as not doing it. In other words, Kamila is a right crazy bitch and the discriptions of her exploits won her the second place in our hall of shame.

The "winner" of the competition is much more dangerous. The consortium Alpine, which is building the National Stadium in Warsaw and was building the A1 highway in Silesia received this dishonour; there were numerous complaints in both locations.

The most serious problem was the incident that led to the death of two workers at the National Stadium in Warsaw. A long series negligence and of cover-ups has been exposed, with workers claiming that the firm has falsified documents to cover up their liability.

Alpine is not actually the official employer of many on its sites as it uses a complicated net of subcontractors. Often workers have no idea who they are actually employed by. Numerous problems have included lack of payment, forced, unpaid overtime, dangerous conditions and substandard housing (freezing containers).

Workers on the A1 claimed that the highway project was more like a work camp, with people being forced to work even 16-18 hours a day, 7 days a week. There were lots of problems, including giving workers annexes to their contract decreasing their pay; those who refused to sign were fired without notice.

All of the worst employers will be announced in the press and their "awards" delivered in rude fashion.