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German Tengelmann goes
union-busting in the Czech Republic
Plus Discount, Tengelmann's discount chain, is running a particularly disgusting union busting campaign in the Czech Republic. At the same time they are insulting their unionised workers in a way that brings Lidl's so-called 'headband scandal' back into fresh memory. The Tengelmann managers in Prague have apparently left behind everything that they may have learned about labour relations, when they moved over the Czech border. "We will soon teach the Czech sows how to toil" Alexander Leiner, president of UNI Commerce affiliated trade union OSPO, is both critical and angry: - The PLUS Discount managers have raised their aggressiveness and vulgarity against the workers to unbearable limits, particularly against those whom they know to be trade union members, Alexander Leiner says. - Comments made to working women such as "We will soon teach the Czech sows how to toil" are at least condemnable, he adds. The union is now planning a massive protest action against the company's serious workers' rights violations and the insulting behaviour of its top managers. The union at Tengelmann's PLUS Discount was established in 2004, and the first proposal for a collective agreement was given to the employer in September that same year. On 29 November, the first negotiations were held, but management refused to even comment on the proposal. The whole trade union board was fired Instead, the whole board of the local trade union were fired. But the company said that they had all left based on a mutual agreement, Alexander Leiner tells. After this, the union has repeatedly asked for the collective agreement negotiations to be taken up, but without any response from the German retail multinational. A new revised collective agreement proposal was then submitted to the PLUS Discount management in February 2005. A month later, the company asked for a delay so that its managers would have time to read through the proposal. Finally, on 15 April, the union received a reaction to its proposal, but this was totally unserious. So instead of entering into real negotiations, the company now intensified its efforts to destroy the trade union: - We can show that they used hundreds of thousands of Crowns to pay off those union representatives who agreed to leave, OSPO says. Still no collective agreement for the Czech workers Still, there is no collective agreement for the Tengelmann PLUS Discount workers. Both OSPO and the entire Czech-Moravian trade union movement have strongly criticised the German retail multinational for "the unserious behaviour of the PLUS Discount management". They will now initiate trade union action against the company, to draw attention to its unacceptable behaviour. The Czech problems are no exception for Tengelmann. An almost similar refusal to seriously negotiate collective agreements is reported by the Spanish unions, and German UNI affiliate ver.di has already raised this with management, until now without any tangible results. On its website, the German retailer presents itself as a modern and internationally-minded company. It is located in 15 countries, has more than 7.500 outlets, employs more than 183,000 employees, and generates annual sales of almost € 27 Billion (35 Billion USD). Tengelmann is controlled by its owners, the Haub family. Erivan Haub, the father, has a 50 per cent ownership share and his sons Karl-Erivan, Christian and Georg Haub a 16 per cent share each. Perhaps they do not really know what is happening in all parts of their large conglomerate, as at home in Germany, labour relations are rather normal.
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