Four months ago, Tornike from Georgia left his job at a steel plant to work as a truck driver. He hoped to earn more money with better working conditions, although he did not see his family often. But it looks like his hopes were dashed. “I have fifty euros for now, that’s all,” Tornike told the German News Agency (DPA). How does it survive in Germany; “My family sends money to help me…”

For three weeks, Tornike and 60 other truck drivers parked their trucks in the parking lot of the Greffenhausen car service in the German state of Hesse and claimed to have earned what they say. Most come from Georgia, Uzbekistan and other Eastern European countries. They had a contract with a Polish company that refuses to pay what was agreed. But weren’t they agreed?

In recent days, the cry of indignation of motorists develops into an international issue. Trade unionists from Germany and the Netherlands expressed their support, the consuls of Georgia and Uzbekistan came to support them, drivers from South Korea posted videos of support on social networks, and families of drivers expressed their outrage near the Polish consulate in Tbilisi.

Employer Responsible…with Lawsuits

Raisa Liparteliani, vice president of the Federation of Georgian Trade Unions, says she has tried to contact the Polish transport company and the country’s trade unions, but so far to no avail. But a lawyer for the Polish company has filed a lawsuit with the Darmstadt prosecutor’s office to stop the “misappropriation of 39 trucks” that he says are company assets. On the other hand, there were no known litigations by employees for non-payment of accruals.

Anna Weirich, an adviser to the Mobility with Justice network, which is trying to help the strikers, says this is not an isolated incident. “A key problem in the industry is that truck drivers with Polish, Lithuanian or Romanian license plates usually receive the minimum wage in those countries,” he notes. It is obviously not illegal when these people actually work in their own country. But what happens when they are asked to work, for example, in Germany?

Based on the European Posting of Workers Directive, the EU theoretically applies the basic principle that a worker posted for a fixed period to another European country enjoys the same rights as a worker in the host country. To put it simply: when a German and a Romanian plumber do the same job in Germany, the Romanian cannot get paid less just because he does not have German citizenship. In 2020, Poland appealed the directive to the European Court of Justice, but the appeal was rejected.

But what happens when an employment relationship gets tangled up in a maze of subcontracting, as is often the case in the transportation industry? Or when the worker does not even have EU citizenship? Polish company “none has ever worked in Poland. They are brought here in vans from their base in Poland, they drive for months on western highways, stay in trucks until dawn, many have months to see their family…”

Attack with an armored personnel carrier

On Good Friday, before Catholic Easter, a Polish employer sent a security company with an armored car (!) to Greffenhausen to evict drivers, but they resisted. The German police intervened and removed the guards. Dutch trade unionist Edwin Atema, who is on the side of the strikers, speaks of “mafia methods that show the true face of the business owner.”

The security team was led by a private detective who, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau, has a long criminal record and is known in Poland as a former parliamentarian and reality TV star. He states that the German police intervention “was scandalous and did not respect the principle of proportionality”, which is why he is going to “sue and protest at the German embassy”, while threatening that “other measures” to end the drivers’ strike.

It destroys the vision of Western Europe

Tornike saw the situation differently. He thought that he would work in Western Europe for a while, and when he saved up some money, he would build a house in his village in the Caucasus for his family. All drivers who have stopped at the Greffenhausen parking lot have similar stories. They say that from a conversation with a Polish transport company, they understood that it would take care of all the necessary formalities for drivers to work in Germany, Austria or Italy.

It is also difficult for Gavron from Uzbekistan. He stays in the parking lot next to his truck and tries to re-establish a WiFi connection in order to talk to his family in Samarkand. He is survived by two children, three and six years old. “I have to see them for three months, and especially the baby does not understand all this,” he says. Regarding the behavior of the Polish employer, Gavron says he is disappointed: “I worked very hard, I like hard work. But I also want to be paid with the money that I am entitled to. Contracts must be respected…”

Source: Deutsche Welle.