Dodaj nową odpowiedź

[mainstream press news report from the Guardian]

The bleeping of the tills stops and the Tesco cashiers grin conspiratorially when I ask to see Iwona Mandat, the head of the Work Confederation, Poland's newest trade union.

"You need to go round the back, where the security guards are," says an anonymous worker. "She'll tell you everything you need to know but I can't talk to you any more."

Past a series of CCTV cameras and questioning from the store manager and head of security, Mandat is sat behind a desk in a small room at the back of a vast corrugated metal shed. She is a slight, calm, 51-year-old working class mother of two, who plans a small revolution.

The woman is rapidly becoming well known in Czestochowa, which is at the heart of a dispute about pay and conditions between the ambitious UK supermarket group and workers in one of its many overseas outposts.

"I want talks to solve everything, but if they fail, a strike will be the only option," Mandat says. "We haven't had a pay rise from Tesco in nine years, and some people are calling for a strike as soon as possible."

Mandat says full-time employees at her store take home about 800 zloty (£165) for a 170-hour month. The Work Confederation is trying to negotiate a 75% increase to 1400 zloty (£291). It also wants pay at time-and-a-half for Sundays and night shifts. The union says this would bring salaries in line with other stores.

Stolen food

It also complains about toilets that regularly run out of soap and toilet paper and claims workers are not allowed to walk through the shop with their coats on, to prevent them from concealing stolen food.

Tesco says almost all Mandat's claims are inaccurate. In response to questions about pay rates, a Tesco spokesperson said: "The welfare of our employees is vitally important to us and we strongly refute these allegations. Pay increases are awarded annually and all employees at our store in Czestochowa received a pay rise in 2007 which equated to an average increase of 9%."

The lowest pay rise in the store last year, says the company, was 2.4% - and that was above the rate of inflation. Since the pay award, however, inflation has taken off. It hit 4% in December, with food price inflation running at 7.9%.

Tesco insists that all workers were paid more than the Polish minimum wage until last month, when there was a big increase in the national minimum wage. As a result Tesco Poland does now have staff on the minimum wage.

The facts may be disputed, but what is clear is that Tesco is facing a potentially damaging dispute in one of its key international markets.

The Work Confederation has 219 members, almost half the workforce at Tesco's Czestochowa store. Mandat says the organisation is growing fast and is in contact with disgruntled Tesco employees across Poland, including the "August 80" trade union at Tesco's store at Tychy, which is also threatening a strike. Mandat is hoping for support from the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) as well as unionised Tesco workers in Britain.

'Subhuman'

"Tesco's chief in London should know we want the company to grow and prosper, but we want Polish management to stop killing the brand by treating staff as subhumans," says Mandat, whose grandfather was a coal miner and father was sent to a German concentration camp. "We want to be proud to work for Tesco, like we were at the beginning. For that, we want to be treated with respect and we need a pay rise."

Seven employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed they are "very unhappy" with their salaries and conditions. The Work Confederation's proposed pay rise, they say, would change their lives.

The workers say they could earn more at a factory making airbags for cars, but want to stay at Tesco because of the friendships they have formed. Many have worked at the Czestochowa store since it opened in 1999.

The Work Confederation says that after several failed attempts, it has set a February 21 deadline for pay discussions. Tesco told the Guardian it had already met the Work Confederation several times and would meet again this month. The company added that the Work Confederation was not the only union it was talking to.

Tesco's Polish subsidiary, Tesco Polska, is the largest retailer in Poland and Britain's largest investor in the country. Tesco Polska faces competition from rival chains such as Carrefour and Albert, but after buying Polish stores from German retailer Hit and Austrian retailer Julius Meinl, it has dominated the market.

Number one

For the financial year ending 2007, Tesco Polska reported 17% revenue growth to £1.35bn.

Ryszard Tomaszewski, Tesco Polska's chief executive, said: "Our ambition is clear: we want to be number one."

The company is so prominent in Poland that during his October election campaign, the prime minister, Donald Tusk, held a press conference at a Tesco store in Hammersmith, London. Poles who lived under communism remember shelves devoid of all but the least popular items. When Tesco first came to Czestochowa, the locals were delighted.

But there are recurring fears that Poland's unchecked hypermarket boom has caused social and economic problems. Former finance minster Teresa Lubinska said: "Hypermarkets like Tesco are no investment. They are not vital for economic growth."

Mandat disagrees, she doesn't want Tesco to leave Poland - she says it just needs to reform.
Shopping around

Tesco's overseas interests have a relatively low profile in Britain but progress during the past 13 years has been significant. The company operates in 12 markets outside the UK, as far afield as the US and China. Britain's largest retailer boasts that more than half its floor space is located abroad, with 100,000 employees serving more than 15 million customers and generating £11bn in sales and £560m of profit.

"The full emergence of international retailing is not something that will happen overnight - it requires a long-term approach," Tesco says on its website, adding that it wants to focus on building a "leading local brand" in a few countries rather than just plant flags for the sake of it.

Tesco made its first foray abroad in Hungary in 1995 before entering Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia the following year, then taking a more daring step into Thailand and Taiwan 10 years ago.

The company has tended to make its moves with little fanfare, preferring to build solid businesses before shouting about success. Its latest international expansion has been into the US, formally announced in February 2006 but coming to fruition only after a series of trials, with a west coast opening last year.

Tesco has prided itself on a flexible approach rather than trying to export its British model. In Thailand it has used a store layout and format that borrows from traditional "wet markets" where customers rummage through piles of produce to pick what they want.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/04/tesco.poland
Terry Macalister