As reported, truck drivers mainly from Georgia and Uzbekistan have been on strike for several weeks at the Gräfenhausen freeway service area near Darmstadt. The reason is unpaid wages of up to 4000 euros each. The truck drivers are employed by the Polish Mazur group. This company hires the truck drivers from non-EU countries as bogus self-employed persons via so-called garbage contracts ("Umowa smieciowa").
The forwarder has now started to transfer wages. However, initially only to individual drivers and it is yet to be seen whether the entire outstanding invoices have been settled. The struggle of the Georgian and Uzbek truck drivers will continue, however. The colleagues are determined: "We will all stay until the last euro is paid".
The truckers' struggle is getting a lot of solidarity and attention. Not least because of the attack of the boss by a paramilitary thug squad.
The head of the company had announced payments in Polish media. At the same time, however, he also denounced the strikers and organized protests in front of the Polish embassy in Berlin by Rutkowski, the head of the strikebreaking lumpen gang. He and his gang of thugs were confronted by Polish colleagues from the syndicalist union Inicjatywa Pracownicza (IP) and disgraced themselves.
Although there have now been a few successes, the struggle may drag on. Mazur knows that if he were to pay now, 700 other trucks could stop as well, because every driver in his company heard about the protest in Gräfenhausen and is certainly keeping a close eye on whether the strikers are successful.
Mazur has contracts with companies such as Volkswagen, IKEA, Lkw Walter, C. H. Robinson and Sennder, among others. This bothers https://www.faz.net/aktuell/rhein-main/graefenhausen-deutsche-spediteure-froh-ueber-fernfahrerstreik-18814203.html">German freight forwarders, who are now coming up with demands to address the miserable situation of non-EU foreigners in particular in the transport sector. Cynicism squared, because they hope to outdo competitors. Of course, the DGB sits on the supervisory boards of the aforementioned monopoly companies and it should be clearly emphasized that these people profit directly from the extreme exploitation against which they are now demonstrating with the "Fair Mobility" network. However, the DGB only pays ten percent of the expenses, also for the current protests. The remaining ninety percent is paid by the German state. A rascal, who would come now to the clue that in this conglomerate the interests of the German imperialism on the back and at expense of Georgian and Uzbek workers are to be interspersed.
Of course, the local political celebrities are also trying to make a profit somehow. SPD Minister of Social Affairs Alexander Schweitzer came to a barbecue, so that he can shoot a few photos on which he can stage himself as a workers friend. The same goes for his party colleagues and SPD parliamentary group leader Günter Rudolph, for Wolfgang Strengmann-Kuhn, Martina Feldmayer and Torsten Leveringhaus from the Greens, and Christiane Böhm from the Left Party.
