Impel is one of the richest firms in Poland, supplying cleaning services, security guards and other services to companies, public instituions, etc. For years we have been publishing news about the company - about how jobs in hospitals are outsourced to Impel and workers find themselves on much worse conditions, about low pay, precarious working conditions and other problems. Many Impel employees have commented on this throughout the years. Below we present another story sent to ZSP about the firm.

The story shows how companies can set up numerous legal entities, in order to avoid responsibilities towards workers. It also unfortunately shows what can happen to people whose once stable jobs are taken over by firms such as Impel.

Three years ago, a group of cleaners lost their jobs at Chopin Airport in Warsaw and filed suit in court to establish who their employer was.

In December 2008, Impel Cleaning bought the cleaning services (cleaning the airplanes) from LOT Ground Services (LGS). LOT Airlines was outsourcing various parts of the business. Impel had already been providing cleaning services for Warsaw Airport Services (WAS) for some time.

The workers of LGS had to be taken over by Impel Cleaning, in accordance with Article 23 of the Labour Code. These workers serviced the LOT airplanes, just as they had before.

In 2009 Impel Cleaning sent 40 workers back to LGS. Impel signed an agreement about this with LOT. Then Impel Cleaning got an exclusive contract to clean LOT aiplanes. LGS, in the meanwhile, were servicing other airlines.The day after the agreement, the workers who were sent back to LGS got an amended contract. The contract stated that they are employed only to service LOT planes.

The workers later found that when Impel Cleaning started up with their services, they probably needed people like them – some with more than 20 years of experience – in order to get a certificate from aviation authorities. After the certificate was obtained, the workers were sent back to LGS, to work exclusively on jobs that were outsourced to Impel Cleaning.

A pretext for claiming that there was no work for these people.

Impel set up another company – Impel Airport Services – which received the certificate to service planes all over the country. Impel Cleaning then transferred the workers to Impel Airport Services.

LGS ended its business activity and LOT Services is formed, taking over the equipment and workers from LGS.

IAS announces a difficult financial situation to the workers and offers them a lower salary. However workers did not agree that the firm was in such a difficult situation. It was possible that it would lose part of a contract it had with WAS, but still had a large contract with LOT. And it was mostly the workers servicing the LOT contract that were affected.

WAS signed a contract with a another newly formed company, Airport Cleaning Service (ACS). The cleaning for WAS had been performed by IAS workers, but when the contract provider changed, none of the IAS workers were sent to ACS. In 2010, LOT decided not to continue services with Impel, but to give the services to LS. So the IAS workers were told by IAS that they would be transferred to LS.

Just before the contract ended, the head of LS met to workers to tell them that this information was not true. The workers were confused and decided to consult a lawyer.

One of the bosses from IAS told the workers to be at work at 6:00, ready to work for LS on the day of the new contract. A lawyer from Impel Cleaning showed up and said that if the workers had problems, she would represent them in the Labour Court. People from Impel took the workers to LS offices and said they were ready to work: LS told them to go away and threatened to call security.

Then Impel claimed that LS were thinking about taking on some of the IAS staff, so Impel was no longer their employer. And with this, they washed their hands of the situation.

The workers never received any termination notice from Impel.

The lawyer from Impel tried to convince the workers that they would become LS employees.

Two cases were brought to court. The court decided in the first case (which according to the workers was not well prepared) that IAS was the employer. At that time, the workers found out that IAS was expanding its business in other cities and still was working at Chopin Airport in Warsaw, servicing other companies. Some time shortly after this first court decision, IAS wound up its activity and a new firm set up by Impel appears, Impel Airport Partner (IAP). IAP has the same employees, equipment and management as IAS.

During the second court case, a man appears there. He is the new owner of IAS – which he bought from Impel. Only now IAS was called SEISO. He introduced himself to workers as the owner of the firm which the workers would wind up at, if the court decided that IAS was the employer, since he has bought IAS. And the first thing he said was that if the court decides that these people are IAS employees, he would just declare the bankruptcy of SEISO, claiming that it did not have enough founds to pay the claims.

So, IAS transferred work and assets to IAP and then sold an empty company.

The work that these people were doing and had been associated with for years (cleaning airplanes) was still in the hands of Impel, only in a „new company”.

Another situation occured when the first case ordered some payments to the workers. The plaintiffs in the second case decided also to file suit for these particular payments. Impel then tried to settle this with the workers – by sending them an agreement that they would get these payments – but would have to resign from all other claims. In such a way, the company tried to settle a much lesser claim and get away with the rest.

Finally, the court decided that the employer was IAS, under its new name SEISO. The workers sued SEISO and SEISO declared bankruptcy. So the workers went to court trying to argue that IAP was a company set up to leave IAS with no assets and no contracts, so that its former employees, who were never terminated, have no job with them to go back to and nothing to sue for. This situation concerns about 90 workers. The workers are convinced that Impel acted against the law and in bad faith. They point out that Impel is a very rich and profitable firm, which has the money to pay the workers.

With this whole situation, we can only comment about how workers are treated in this whole situation and how precarious their work is with this outsourcing. It is important that measures be taken against these types of corporate games and that the workers organize themselves across the industry, in solidarity with each other, to combat this misery. For our part, we will inform the public about how this works, continue to warn workers and encourage them to organize outside of the main unions, which have allowed this sort of situation to go on for far too long.