Several Eastern European truck drivers from the Polish transport companies Lukmaz, Agmaz and Imperia – all owned by the same manager – have left work to demand back pay. Their employer sent a thug squad.
‘It is historic that exploited drivers from Eastern Europe stop working for more than a week because they are thoroughly tired of years of exploitation. They have the support of ETF and all their affiliated transport unions’, responds Frank Moreels, chairman of the Belgian Transport Association BTB-ABVV and the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF).
The German advisory network Fair Mobility and various German trade unionists are also behind the drivers. In addition, passing truck drivers, who mainly come from Georgia and Uzbekistan, also express their solidarity.
Squad
On Friday, the situation got out of hand when the Polish employer sent a team of thugs to the parking lot. “In armored vehicles and in full combat gear, their job was to intimidate the truck drivers and, if necessary, use force to take the trucks away,” says Moreels.
The confrontation was prevented by a large-scale police action. Nineteen people were arrested, including the manager himself.
The drivers of the various Polish companies drove on behalf of large companies such as Ikea, Volkswagen and DHL. ETF calls on the major economic players to stop doing business with the owner of these Polish transport companies.
‘The economic players hold the key to stop this exploitation and social dumping,’ says Moreels. ‘In their race to the bottom of increasingly cheap transport, exploitation and criminal activities are the only way to meet this far too low price. That has to stop urgently.’
