In Poland, the gig financial system is on the march

Katarzyna Duda is a regulation and political science graduate from Opole College and creator of a guide, Kiedyś tu było życie, teraz jest tylko bieda (“As soon as there was life right here, now there may be solely poverty”, 2019), wherein she appears to be like at failed socioeconomic transformations in Poland. She additionally works within the social coverage division of the Polish Nationwide Commerce Union Alliance (Ogólnopolskie Porozumienie Związków Zawodowych, OPZZ). Her guide KORPO: Jak się pracuje w zagranicznych korporacjach w Polsce (“KORPO: How is it to work in massive international corporations in Poland?”) was printed in 2022.

Emilia Konwerska: Once I began your guide, I believed it could be about one thing utterly completely different. The “company” setting I had in thoughts was that of Mordor [Warsaw’s business district, nicknamed after Tolkien’s creation], with its high quality fits and tedious-but-well-paid jobs within the metropolis centre. We’re aware of David Graeber’s Bullshit jobs and but we’re discovering a completely completely different story. You speak about Amazon workers, couriers, and so forth. Why concentrate on them?

Katarzyna Duda: I’d divide my interviewees, who work in an organization, into two teams. The primary are the individuals I write about in my first guide, Kiedyś tu było życie, teraz jest tylko bieda (“As soon as there was life right here, now there may be solely poverty”, not translated). They’re typically of superior age, at the very least 40, 50 and even 60 and over. They arrive from small cities and haven’t any job alternatives of their area, not to mention a great wage. They earn 3,000 zlotys [around €677, or €67 more than the minimum wage]. These individuals typically journey two hours simply to get to work. It simply goes to indicate that there aren’t any different alternatives.

Do not they’ve a selection?

In fact they’ve a selection: to not work. The second group are college students or current graduates – individuals who assume that that is only a momentary job. They intention to pay for his or her research and achieve work expertise.

These individuals occupy junior workplace positions, for instance manning phone hotlines to assist clients with technical issues. They supplied details about administration and remuneration.

These individuals assume that their future is about to vary, and that every one they must do is maintain slaving away. However that’s simply an phantasm, as a result of in actuality they keep for much longer, on account of loans or different constraints.

Virtually all my pals work at Citibank in Olsztyn. These are individuals of various ages, with completely different instructional backgrounds: media graduates, legal professionals, individuals with solely a secondary schooling. Typically I get the impression that these massive corporations are the largest employers in Poland. I’m wondering how many individuals work for them.

We do not have that type of knowledge. However even when we did, it could be inaccurate. Amazon, H&M, and so forth – all these corporations use momentary employment businesses. The employees are their workers whereas not being their workers. FedEx, which I speak about in my guide, works with couriers: they don’t seem to be workers, however fairly what we name “associates”.

So corporations have accomplished away with the thought of the worker and all of the rights that go along with it…

Corporations encourage self-employment with a purpose to offload accountability for working circumstances. However they’re additionally doing this to guard themselves from workers organising themselves into commerce unions. They use business-to-business contracts, i.e., a transaction between two financial entities. It’s the huge corporations which might be behind this pattern.

How does this business-to-business relationship between an organization and a courier work?

It isn’t a relationship wherein the events are equal. It’s based mostly on the supremacy of the corporate, which makes the freelancers depending on one another. The corporate imposes its circumstances and makes any challenges arduous.

Staff are compelled to turn into self-employed, every courier being a one-man enterprise. In my guide I describe, amongst different issues, the working circumstances of couriers employed by an American firm based mostly in Poland. In apply, self-employment implies that within the occasion of sickness the couriers should organise a substitute themselves, or else they may pay a penalty for being absent from work. Likewise, they’ve to keep up their very own automobile and pay their very own social-security contributions.

In different phrases, it is a means of offloading the accountability for an worker.

In one other firm, within the finance sector, the managers are chargeable for recruiting and coaching the brokers. The brokers grant loans to clients after which accumulate curiosity regularly. Each day, they’re chargeable for sending experiences to their supervisor on the work they’ve accomplished. The brokers go to a number of clients a day, typically dozens of them, and must journey vital distances.

‘The truth that issues had been higher earlier than might be a vestige of the communist period. There have been nonetheless sure requirements that gave workers the suitable to relaxation. These requirements had been then tailored to the working circumstances prevailing in capitalist methods’

A supervisor is employed in response to the quantity of labor to be accomplished per process. When an agent resigns (or two of them resign, a supervisor’s nightmare), the accountability falls to the supervisor. So, along with his or her personal work, she or he should additionally go to the shoppers for whom the previous agent was accountable.

The case of FedEx is fascinating. FedEx works with couriers who themselves make use of different couriers. The corporate outsources all accountability. Within the occasion of sick depart, all the pieces falls on the shoulders of the courier.

All the roles you describe have one factor in widespread: they’re getting worse. Corporations are tightening their belts increasingly more. For instance, it was attainable to work sitting down in factories, however in the future a productiveness officer calculated that it was extra worthwhile to work standing up. Amazon workers used to have the ability to carry their very own sandwiches. Right this moment, that is forbidden within the warehouse. And so it goes on. Are working circumstances getting worse? The place does this all finish?

It may well finish, because it did at Amazon, with the demise of an worker who was merely exploited to his final breath. I am speaking about Dariusz Dziamski, who died within the warehouse within the city of Sadów in September 2021. He was 49 years previous. Since 2019, he had held the place of “water spider”, the place his job was to gather and transport containers containing merchandise. Amongst workers, they name this job “the motorway”, as a result of the journey is lengthy and the “water spider” is at all times on the transfer.

In Dziamski’s case, there was lots of negligence and many alternative components that led to his demise. Firstly, the labour inspectorate was at fault: of the 9 emails despatched by his spouse, none obtained a reply, and no motion was taken. Secondly, his boss, the bottom supervisor within the hierarchy, had been transferred from one other division as a result of workers had complained about him. Everybody knew there was an issue.

The truth that issues had been higher earlier than might be a vestige of the communist period. There have been nonetheless sure requirements that gave workers the suitable to relaxation. These requirements had been then tailored to the working circumstances prevailing in capitalist methods. In the beginning of this transformation, within the Nineteen Nineties, there have been nonetheless canteens in corporations the place you may chat with everybody, however that was solely a interval of transition between communism and capitalism. 15 or 20 years later, canteens had been a lot rarer. Right this moment, issues are getting worse as a result of the intention is to do extra for much less.

What struck me most in your earlier guide was the case of a safety guard who did not have a bathroom and urinated on herself. An anatomical theme additionally options in your new guide: to train management over workers’ our bodies is without doubt one of the worst types of humiliation?

One of many name centres I described has arrange a timer to time workers’ breaks. Each time you exit, it’s important to use an identifier that counts the time you have been away. Authorisation should even be looked for a break of greater than three minutes. This is applicable specifically to workers working in on-line chat rooms. Time spent in the bathroom is counted as break time. If the scheduled break time is exceeded, workers threat a disciplinary interview.

In one other firm, a automotive producer, one of many workers declared that “the most effective factor can be so that you can come to work having already shat and pissed”, and should you ask to go to the bathroom too typically, you possibly can see by the look on the supervisor’s face that he does not prefer it.

One of many buyers in a international firm stated that the “value of labour in Poland is affordable”. Polish workers earn lower than workers in Western Europe.

An worker in Poland found that he was incomes lower than an worker within the West, despite the fact that he had a extra senior place. Corporations assume it is regular to pay 3000 {dollars} in the USA and 3000 zlotys in Poland for a similar work. Commerce unions are stronger in Western Europe, so employers face a stronger opponent.

Precisely, within the corporations you speak about, there’s lots of antagonism between workers, which stems largely from inequality of therapy. Staff should not inspired to spend time collectively or to have contact with one another. One of many first guidelines of the unhealthy employer appears to be “divide and conquer “.

Corporations don’t need workers to speak to one another. A commerce unionist, who was laid off from a automotive plant, stated that corporations are afraid of conditions the place workers are involved with one another. The concept is that they need to not trade info. Inequalities additionally stem from the completely different types of recruitment. For instance, momentary employees at Amazon obtained a bonus, which didn’t please everlasting workers. However momentary employees may be made redundant at any time, as if they’re a reserve workforce. Typically workers discover out on the bus cease that they not have a job. Or managers merely misinform workers, telling them that others have accepted one thing they have not actually accepted in any respect.

You dedicate an entire chapter to the “net scrubbers”. I believed that was largely the job of algorithms.

In Poland, there are at the very least two subsidiaries of a multinational that clear up social media. An worker receives on-line video content material to be moderated, and has to examine that there aren’t any scenes of violence, rape, and so on. The staff subsequently act as a filter. The multinational has subsidiaries everywhere in the world the place individuals from completely different international locations work, together with the Polish subsidiary, the place there are individuals from all walks of life and talking completely different languages. Their job is to look at scenes of homicide and violence, or search for them. You do not know whether or not you are going to see somebody stroking a kitten or killing it.

What may be accomplished about this? To start with: begin remunerating correctly the individuals who watch this type of horrific content material. These movies come from Africa, Asia and South America. Then again, in these corporations, the most effective remuneration goes to the individuals who communicate the language of the content material they’re taking a look at. Wage variations rely on how troublesome it’s to search out somebody who speaks the language in query. For instance, Japanese audio system are nicely paid, as it’s troublesome to search out somebody in Poland who understands the language. Polish audio system, alternatively, are straightforward to interchange.

One change could possibly be to change remuneration in response to the diploma of violence of the content material considered. In spite of everything, this content material must be checked by a human being: a machine will not be 100% dependable by itself.

And workers cannot discuss to anybody about what they see.

Typically they speak about it, and I describe circumstances like that in my guide. In fact, psychological assist is critical and out there, however it isn’t that straightforward. A psychologist is available however workers are afraid to go and see him, as a result of they’re afraid of being seen as weak, of not coping, and subsequently of being the primary on the record to be made redundant. However corporations do not rent Danes from Denmark, they search for individuals in Poland who communicate Danish.

You additionally dedicate one of many chapters in your guide to particular financial zones. It appears to me that no person talks about them today, whereas they was an actual situation on the left. But the historical past of those zones exhibits the ability of capital over the state.

These zones had been created on industrial wastelands to fill the void left by derelict factories. For the authorities, it has at all times been extra vital to create jobs than to make sure their high quality. What issues is managing the unemployed, in order that they’ll boast of getting a low unemployment price.

And that is how the state eliminates the issue.

Sure, that is why the state does not get too concerned. It does not need to complicate life for the massive corporations, as a result of it is afraid that they will not need to arrange right here. The businesses, alternatively, really feel no obligation. They arrange right here as a result of it is low cost, but when in 5 or ten years’ time they really feel protected in Romania or Bulgaria, they’re going to relocate there.

The repatriation of Fiat’s manufacturing to Italy prompted a scandal, when it ought to have been a pure factor to do. American corporations might give jobs to individuals in Detroit, however they like to make use of somebody from Katowice to scrub up the net. Since huge enterprise does not care about its personal compatriots, why ought to it really feel any connection to foreigners? It is not the Poles or Ukrainians stealing somebody’s job, it is the massive corporations stealing individuals’s jobs. We do not speak about it, we use summary ideas as a substitute: the world financial system, globalisation, pure processes, and so forth.

However does the state have any energy in any respect?

Sure, however the query stays: does the state need labour inspectors to turn into enemies of corporations? The large firms aren’t any exception to the rule. In apply the specter of inspection inside massive corporations, together with Polish ones, will not be an actual incentive to implement respectable working circumstances.

These particular financial zones should not there to assist workers struggle in opposition to corporations. The state might look into the state of affairs round momentary job businesses, for instance. The state might do rather a lot, however it’s not essentially .

I might like to complete on a constructive observe. In your guide you speak about the opportunity of altering work and altering the office. You give examples of small adjustments that workers and unions have managed to attain.

Typically strikes by workers result in a fairer distribution of firm income and pay rises. As income improve, so ought to employees’ wages. The distribution ought to be fairer between employers and white-collar employees.

That is what occurred in 2022 on the Solaris group, the place workers went on strike and did not quit for nearly six weeks! It is a scandal {that a} multinational with such a status and such large income ought to need to abuse its workers to such a degree. However the unity and willpower of the workers prevailed, which simply goes to indicate that there’s power in numbers.

Usually, it is not huge adjustments, however small issues that enable workers to take again a certain quantity of energy. For instance, by regaining management over advantages, workers can resolve the place the cash goes.

At FedEx, severance funds have been negotiated within the occasion of mass redundancies.

This doesn’t apply to couriers, however solely to workers employed immediately. And typically it is simply symbolic issues, like beginning to write “please” and “thanks” in emails.

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