FAU-IWA Supports Polish Workers Against Wage Theft!

Along the Low Rhine river, in Germany's outer West and adjacent to the Netherlands, thousands of workers from Poland work under precarious conditions in agriculture and gardening. They get cheated on their wage very often, but sometimes they fight back. The  Free Worker's Union (Ger.: Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter Union, FAU) does actually practice anarchosyndicalist solidarity with them and thereby demonstrates that borders play no role at all. FAU is the German section of the International Workers Association (IWA).

Gardening and agriculture along the Low Rhine is unthinkable without Polish workers. Their harvest and plant-breeding work is badly paid so that companies hardly employ residents. Yet, finding a job in agriculture and gardening farer away from there, e.g. in Kleve or Borken, does not automatically imply better working conditions. Sometimes you simply do not know if you get paid in time or if you receive your money at all. Some weeks ago, employees from Grenzland Produktions- und Handels GmbH asked FAU for support because the company owes them money. Polish workers contacted the union because they have heard about FAU's support for Polish workers last year.

FAU Münsterland talked to the employees who work in Rhede (Borken county) and learned about more than a dozen of Polish and German Grenzland workers claiming back wages up to several thousand Euros sometimes.