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How OTTO Treats Injured Workers
New actions are planned at OTTO Workforce. In addition to previous demands against abuse of temporary workers, we raise the question of the treatment of injured workers. M., who was working in Holland loading goods, sustained a serious injury related to this work. He has been on sick leave. The company has not paid him any money during this time and has said that it will not have any other work for him.
The worker is not able to get any answers from the company, which also refuses to send him anything in writing or even give him the emails of people responsible for claims.
OTTO has claimed to journalists investigating their treatment of workers that claims that they do not always pay for sick leave are unfounded. Yet at the same time, this man, injured on the job, gets absolutely no financial support, is told there is no different work for him and is brushed off when trying to ask about his payment from the company! This is totally unacceptable! No tolerance for labour abuse! OTTO workforce – pay this sick leave and appropriate compensation! New jobs for workers who cannot perform their old ones due to industrial accidents! Better safety and work conditions on the job now!
Some payments have been made to OTTO workers for money they were owed. However, the problems still remain. Workers may be fined, housing conditions are poor. We ask people to send an email to OTTO either directly to the CEO or using this form.
To: Fran van Gool
fvangool@ottoworkforce.eu
Model letter (please change or add what you want):
OTTO WORKFORCE! STOP FINING AND HARASSING WORKERS! PAY WHAT YOU OWE!
STOP THE EXPLOITATION OF FOREIGNER WORKERS AND STOP IGNORING THEIR COMPLAINTS!
OTTO has paid some compensation to 4 Polish workers who fought back against the company's practices in the Netherlands.
Today members of ZSP were supposed to have a meeting at OTTO's Polish headquarters but yesterday the CEO of the company decided to meet with one cheated worker and a representative of the Vrije Bond at their headquarters in Holland. This was the second meeting this week. At the first one, on Monday, the boss denied many of the problems at the agency. However yesterday he wanted to meet again. He decided to make payments to the 3 workers whose claims had not yet been met. (A 4th worker received most of the money he was owed some days ago.)
Members of the ZSP will have a meeting next week to discuss problems with the fining system and other matters and are organizing some informational events in different cities in Poland where many workers are recruited.
Given the vast destruction wrought by the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011 and given the threat of a nuclear disaster caused by the destroyed nuclear power plant in Fukushima I, the FAU-IWA launched a solidarity and aid fund for precarious workers in Japan - the "Freeters Solidarity Fund". As an anarcho-syndicalist grassroots trade union, our first concern is the many precarious workers (Freeters), who were excluded even before the disaster, often forced into appalling working and living conditions. It calls for donations for the relief and solidarity fund whose resources are to be used in close consultation with the "Freeters Zenpan Roso," a self-organized group of precarious workers in Japan. Donations, can be sent to the following account: FAU, FAU, Konto 96152201, Postbank Hamburg (BLZ 200 100 20) under the codeword "Freeters". Every little contribution is welcome as an expression of living class solidarity.
On March 21 a group of Polish workers, together with the AGA/Vrije Bond and members of the anarchosyndicalist union ZSP did an action at the headquarters of OTTO Workforce in Venray, Holland, against exploitation and bad work and living conditions. OTTO has been cheating workers from Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia working on precarious contracts in Holland.
On March 7 we learned that one of the most active members of the tenants' movement, Jolanta Brzeska, was found dead in the woods.
Her body had been burnt beyond recognition and it is unclear whether she was alive or dead when it happened.
Jola was 64 years old. She was one of the founders of the Warsaw Tenants' Association, a good speaker and committed activist who went to all demonstrations, who blocked evictions and advised other tenants. She herself was involved in a battle with Warsaw's most notorious slumlord, Marek Mossokowski, and was the last tenant left in a valuable piece of real estate at the time of her death.
On February 25-26, pickets took place in nearly 20 cities in Poland and Germany, protesting against bad working conditions and union repression in OBI.
The action campaign was started by ZSP in Poland at the beginning of the year at the request of a couple of comrades from OBI and some workers from several cities who started to network on the internet. The main reason the campaign was started were incidents of union repression in the store in Krakow. So far OBI has fired a unionist there, threatened another with dismissal and refused to renew the contract of a third. In Walbrzych a worker who spoke out against bad working conditions received a disciplinary warning. The news about the formation of a union in OBI, which had no unions since the pioneer union in the chain was repressed in 2001, got employees around the country talking about working conditions in the stores and what they could do about them.
On Feb. 25 ZSP held a picket at the OTTO office in Opole - a city known for the large number of temp agencies sending people to work in Holland. Potential workers were warned about the agency and we confronted OTTO with the facts concerning their policies and practices against foreign workers in Holland.
As this picket was aanounced, the firm prepared for our visit. Not only were a couple of police cars there, but also the police chief and some women from the firm whose task it was to try to convince us that there are no problems, except for the strange behaviour of the workers.
Activists from the ZSP and a comrade from PA again visited the Warsaw office of OTTO Workforce. We went in with a list of complaints and demands to the company, listing some of the concrete abused OTTO committed against a list of workers and demanding they are paid what they were owed. We brought radio journalists and people from one of the main TV stations with us, to record the reaction of the company.
Despite the fact that OTTO's PR-trained management claim in the media that they listen to and deal with the complaints of the workers, nobody in OTTO Warsaw office wanted to talk to us or even take the letter prepared. All they did was try to get rid of us and pass the responsibility onto other people. They told us to bring our protest to the Wroclaw office (no problem), they told us to talk to Holland (we already did). Such tactics just show the level of arrogance of a firm that feels no responsibility at all for its broken promises and exploitation of workers.
We will keep informing people of the situation and more people have come forward to expose what is happening to them in Holland.
Some workers cheated by the OTTO temp agency are fighting back!
They don't get the conditions promised to them in their contracts and job interviews and the company makes money off a system of fines used at the workers' "hotels". The end result - people work and don't get paid, or they wind up paying too much money for substandard housing which does not meet the standards of the collective labour agreement OTTO is supposed to be following.
After some Polish colleagues working in Holland were cheated by the agency, they decided to take action. The Vrije Bond in Holland, ZSP in Poland and Priama Akcia in Slovakia have all started taking action to both inform workers of their rights and encourage them to organize and take action.
