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Walmartization in a
European tapping:
Management by mistrust and fear seems to be the company's approach wherever it can get by with it. Germany's UNI Commerce affiliate ver.di has recently published a collection of workers' stories about life inside the company. The ver.di Black Book - or Schwarzbuch in German, as a reference also to Lidl's owner Dieter Schwarz - has inspired other workers as well to tell their stories. A new Black Book will therefore soon be published by the union, to complement the web log that ver.di has already opened up on its internet site. More than 3,500 present and former Lidl workers have already contacted ver.di because of the book. Almost all of them confirm the reports about poor employer performance and labour relations, the union says. The book follows last year's head band scandal The strong criticism by Lidl's German workers follows press reports late last year, which accused Lidl of requiring Czech women workers to wear special head bands to identify them during their monthly periods. The practice, which the company has denied, was said to have been put in place to enable them to go to the toilet during working hours, which is generally forbidden by Lidl. When the news came out in Germany's leading retail magazine Lebensmittelzeitung, it caused widespread anger particularly among women groups in the countries where the discounter is present. Also competitors were irritated, feeling that Lidl was destroying everybody's reputation in the new market economies of Central Europe. "Our workers can surely go to the toilet whenever they need to", said a senior manager of Lidl's largest German competitor to UNI Commerce. The worker statements in ver.di's Black Book are confirmed also by information from other countries. The company is obsessed with control, to the extent that it becomes a serious violation of the integrity of its workers. Everyone is treated with mistrust, as a potential thief. In a large interview in yesterday's Handelsblatt, Germany's leading economic newspaper, Lidl's CEO Klaus Gehrig confirmed that this is indeed the management's attitude: "And what comes to the pocket controls: During one year, 250 million Euro worth of goods disappear, about half of them through the workers. We must act against this," Gehrig said. And they do - pockets are searched, as well as workers' cars at the parking places. Everything that is consumed at the workplace during the breaks - be it a youghurt or a soft drink bottle - must not only have a cash ticket taped to it, but the ticket must also be signed by the supervisor, a Finnish Lidl worker reports. Lidl is afraid of its workers organising No wonder that the German discounter is afraid of its workers forming trade unions. In Germany, where many of the are indeed organised in ver.di, the company goes to great lengths to stop them from electing shop stewards and other workers' representatives. The whole enterprise structure is geared towards this, when the union has organised a part of it, the structure is suddenly changed. In the Nordic countries, Lidl has been forced to accept the UNI Commerce affiliated unions as representatives of its workers. The company has joined the national employers' associations, and is behaving in a formally correct way. But the management by mistrust and fear is still there, and local trade unionists report that the company has not really adapted itself to the traditionally respectful behaviour between management and workers which exists in this part of the world.
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