Protest against Wage Theft at Grenzland Produktions und Handels GmbH

The FAU held a protest on April 9, 2011 with a protest in front of the offices of Pflanzen-Teufel in Duisburg-Buchholz to demand back wages claimed by dozens of employees. They have been waiting in Rhede, in the Münsterland, for months for their salaries. In addition to workers from the region, whose wage arrears amount to sometimes more than three thousand euros, there are  also Polish colleagues concerned, who must persevere under difficult conditions. The FAU asked the company responsible "Grenzland Produktions und Handels GmbH" to pay the outstanding wages immediately several times in recent weeks. There was no response, so steps will be taken to collect the debts. Agriculture and horticulture in the Lower Rhine and Münsterland depend on workers from Poland. Thousands of them work with crops and plant breeding. This work is so poorly paid that the companies cannot find local people to do it. But even to when it is possible to find a job in these conditions in the greenhouses in the districts of Kleve and Borken, one can not always rely on receiving wages on time. This happened for example in the specific case of the Grenzland Produktions und Handels GmbH based in the Lower Rhine Straelen. Workers from this company had earlier this year approached with a request for assistance at the FAU, because for months they had been getting only partial payment of their wages, or being paid late. These Polish workers seized the initiative after learning that last year, the FAU supported Polish colleagues in Dortmund in a wage dispute.
The FAU Münsterland subsequently got in touch with the workers in the border country, working in Rhede  (Borken district). It quickly became apparent that several dozen German and Polish workers had wage arrears - in some cases more than 3,000 euros.
There was a lot of research into the legal background of the employer. The company registered as a  GmbH (Ltd) in December 2009 with two partners, Matthias Steverding and Michael Klein, both allegedly residing in Duisburg. The registered office in Straelen, near the Dutch border, is only a mailbox address, where they pick up their post.  A few months ago later, in early 2010, a company called Steva took over the company from a bankruptcy. Steva, runs a plant breeding operation in Rhede has received over the years more than 250,000 euros of public funding. Managing Director Gerd Steverding is a relative of Matthias Steverding, the shareholder of Grenzland Produktions und Handels GmbH,  The business remained, so to speak, all in the family. In the course of research, the FAU received information that the owners of Grenzland not only run the company in Rhede, but have own plant stores calles "Plants Devil" in Duisburg and Bocholt. Michael Klein, the director of Grenzen  also had business in Venlo in the Netherlands. There too Polish workers were employed. As a result of this research we found a difficult web of companies, insolvencies, entanglements, mailbox addresses, phones, faxes and mail forwarding. And in the middle were several dozen workers who were waiting in precarious conditions for their outstanding wages.
A web of mini-jobs and apparent independence
The workers themselves knew very little about the company's background. But it plays an important role. There is first of all the different legal situations. While the locals tend to work with mini-jobs or on a part-time basis in the greenhouses, the Polish workers are not employed at all and had no social insurance contributions. Instead, they get a business license and had to sign a form to be exempt from sales tax for small companies. What they signed there, were unclear for them and many did not understand the German. The company has issued invoices for the work, which is charged at unit prices. They do not even know if they have health insurance. 

There is no question that one cannot speak of self-employment in this case. This method is used in the industry because the bosses don't boy social security, pension and health insurance contributions which had to be paid for the Polish contract workers. Courts have repeatedly found such self-employment to be bogus and found companies guilty of evading taxes and social security contributions, ordering them to pay fines and back payments.
In one way, the situation of both the local and Polish workers are identical: almost all are owed back wages. Of seven Polish colleagues, employed in Rhede, the FAU documented wage arrears amounting to several thousand euros. 21 German workers have signed a letter confirming the working hours of their Polish colleagues. Currently four of the Polish workers are still in Rhede, three of them resigned from work in late January. By the end of February the local workers had also not received their salaries for January. Threatening to quit, four of them then received their pay for January. Some continued to work at first, others turned to the Labour Court. The situation of the  Polish colleagues who remain, in the meanwhile, is increasingly precarious. They sit in a more or less abandoned hotel, where they are left to themselves.
Grenzland Produktions und Handels GmbH  must pay!
After several discussions with the workers, reviewing documents and consulting with lawyers, the FAU, the initially asked the company to immediately pay the outstanding wages. The owners have shown no reaction, leaving aside the fact that one of the Steverdings appeared furious at the hotel. To safeguard the rights of workers, the FAU started claims against the company.
After that there were still no positive reaction from Grenzen, so several unions of the FAU regional  decided together with the employees to educate customers about the business practices of the company. The first action was today's consumer information campaign in Duisburg. The company Plants-Devil in Duisburg, which belonged to Grenzen at least until recently, is closely connected with the Straelener company.  Other actions are planned in Rhede, Duisburg and Venlo, with various newspapers and other media writing about the case. Grenzen must stop these practices, pay outstanding wages immediately and be prepared to pay wages on time in the future.
A few years ago there was a farm in Münsterland, which refused to pay back wages for Spanish workers and was closed after a week-long wave of customer information activities of the FAU in the wake of press reports about the conditions there, the authorities asking for back social security contributions and taxes.