Azteca Bar Conflict and Campaign Against Illegal Deductions in the Food Service Sector

For some time now we have been aware of several problems which are widespread in the food service industry in Poland. ZSP already started to take on the question of illegal, unpaid trial periods. Now we are also starting to deal with the problem of illegal deductions and fines taken from people's salaries.

During our annual "Worst Boss of the Year" contest, a number of workers from fast food establishments and restaurants wrote to us complaining about illegal deductions taken from their pay. This seems to be quite a widespread problem and, although it is not unique to the food service industry, it seems to be especially acute there. What hurts the workers the most is that the wages in this sector are already quite low, therefore any deductions made can put the worker in extremely difficult circumstances indeed.

One of our comrades, a high-school student struggling to make a little money, landed a shit job at a cafe in Warsaw called Azteca Bar. Being that he knows better, he did not agree to or sign any of the boss's outrageous proposals. Refusal to sign such papers was one of the things the boss mentions in his dismissal letter.

On Aug. 20, ZSP held its first action there. We are demanding an end to the deliberate cheating of vulnerable workers in this cafe.

The problems which led to the conflict are the following:

1. The owner of the bar uses unpaid trial periods for workers. On top of that, he claims that he provides "training" for them and estimates the value of this at 1300 zloties (326 euro). (This "training" basically consists of showing workers how to use the microwave oven and explaining what they need to hide if the health inspectors come.) He gives the workers contracts which state that this money will be deducted from their salaries if they do not work a certain period of time. It is approximately one month's salary - for full-time workers. If somebody works only one month, s/he receives nothing.

Most of the employees are students, working part time. Our comrade was earning about 500 zloties a month (125 euros), so this fake "training" would cost people like that almost three months' salary!

2. Besides this the boss illegally withheld over half of our comrade's pay for "damages".

(We have received, by registered letter, "documentation" of the "damages". For example, one of the keys got stuck on the boss's old, crappy calculator, so he claims that the employee "broke the calculator". Some tiny stains appeared on the wall, (not even visible in his "documentation") and he claims the employee "destroyed the wall".)

3. The boss tries to get students to agree to work illegally, without any contracts at all.

Azteca Bar is located near a student dormitory. Many of these students are poor kids from other cities struggling to study in Warsaw. They are often desperate to find any job in a city with high youth unemployment. Work in Azteca Bar may end up for them as a few weeks or months of unpaid or underpaid labour. We therefore warn them against agreeing to these conditions.

We demand that the bar pay our comrade his due salary, stop the practices mentioned above and raise the wages.

During the action, activists from ZSP blocked the cafe, spoke about the work conditions there and handed out leaflets to passersby. The owner of the cafe called the city guards and police; they came but nothing happened. We spoke with the owner, who would not answer questions about his illegal practices and just kept repeating that we should send letters in writing to his bookkeeper and take him to court. We explained that we would come even every day to his cafe if we had to. And we plan to do exactly that.

We also want to prepare some workshops for the students living in the dormitory on their rights as workers.

Since we often hear about illegal deductions at the workplace, we are preparing a new booklet on this topic. Although we have encountered this problem in other sectors, it seems to be especially widespread in food services.

Even though this action at Azteca Bar has just started, we have already been contacted by other restaurant workers - this time not from some little cafe, but one of the most exclusive restaurants in Warsaw. We are hoping that the staff there will decide to take collective action and fight to improve their very poor conditions.