Thousands of Poles being cheated by Danish employers

Being cheated and low wages are some of the typical problems

Sep 22, 2015

Every third Polish worker in the Danish labour market has experienced being cheated by their employer, according to a new survey jointly compiled by Ugebrevet A4, Avisen.dk and the 3F union magazine Fagbladet 3F.

They are also less paid than their Danish colleagues. The report found that the Polish workers are paid on average 19,535 kroner a month, which is about 5,000 kroner less than skilled and unskilled 3F members and 12,000 kroner less than Danes in general.

“The reason for the lower wage is that the Poles think that it’s high because it’s better than what they could earn in Poland – even if it’s close to the minimum wage in Denmark,” Søren Kaj Andersen, an associate professor and expert in foreign labour at the University of Copenhagen, told Fagbladet 3F.

Appalled union
There are about 40,000 Poles working in Denmark at the moment, so over 10,000 Poles have experienced being cheated by their employers.

The union 3F, which has a considerable number of Polish members, finds the practice appalling.

“It goes against the rules and culture we’ve built up in the Danish labour market over 100 years,” Palle Bisgaard, the deputy head of 3F’s construction group Byggegruppen, told Ugebrevet A4.

“We often here of people being paid 80 or even 60 kroner an hour even though the agreement was 100 kroner.”