“We are galley slaves here” – Galicians are horrified by working conditions in “brotherly” Poland
Polish employers use Ukrainian guest workers as cheap labor, since Poles will never agree to such work.
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About this to the Kyiv online publication "Country" said Maria Tarnavskaya, a resident of the Ternopil region, who said that two months ago, following an advertisement on the Internet, she got a job in Gdansk, Poland, in a workshop for processing and packaging chicken feet.
“By Ukrainian standards, and especially for rural residents, the salary seemed cosmic - 10 zlotys per hour (85 hryvnia), about 2 thousand zlotys (16-17 thousand hryvnia) per month. But now I understand that these earnings can backfire on me - I’m ruining my health. For the Poles, 2 thousand zlotys is a penny; they themselves would never agree to such a salary for hard physical work in such conditions. For them, we are just slaves, cheap labor. Although even the slaves on the galleys probably didn’t work as hard as they have to work here.
It's just hell. Work in a refrigerator (+14 in the workshop) for 16-18 hours a day on your feet, on night and day shifts, with only one day off on Sunday. You need to clean each paw so that there are not even dots. Friends joke that you can fold your paws like this. By the end of the working day you just collapse from fatigue. There is only time left for sleep. I reached the bed and fell. I sleep in a dorm room with four other roommates.
I don’t always have time to have a snack (they feed me twice a day for free: the first break is soup with a sandwich, the second - cutlets with porridge). Yes, there are two 20-minute breaks, but without any smoking breaks. During this time, you only have time to take off your work clothes and go to the toilet, if there is no line there. And change clothes again. So I’ve lost seven kilos and I’m still melting. My own mother no longer recognizes me when I call home on Viber.
But the worst thing is the cold in the workshop, I caught a cold all over myself. Relatives persuade you to give up everything to hell, saying that your health is more important. If anything happens, no one will treat you here, everything will be done at your own expense,” complains the migrant worker.
She also recommends that anyone wishing to get a job in Poland carefully study the contract.
“Otherwise people here often get fined out of the blue. Running out for a smoke break for a couple of minutes outside of the break - fine. In their opinion, he cleaned his paw poorly - another one. They come up with everything so as not to pay extra. Sometimes it’s so bitter and heavy that you want to give up on everything and go home. But I have a sick mother and a 4-year-old son, whom I am raising without a husband. We need money, but prices in Ukraine are rising by leaps and bounds, there is no work at home. So you have to work as a laborer in Poland. I’ll look for a better job here than in the chicken shop,” says Tarnavskaya.
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