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ZSP has long-term campaigns both against wage theft and against exploitation using public funds. Workers from the companies Ochrona Mega Marcin Kowalski and other connected companies like Proteo are fighting to get paid what they are owed.

The K. family has up to 70 companies registered. This situation in Poland is often used to circumvent various aspects of the labor law. In this situation, some workers from Ochrona Mega received trash contracts through Proteo in order to pretend that they were not working overtime in the same company. Cheating companies like these also use a myriad of companies to avoid laws that say that after employing someone twice on a temporary contract, they have to be employed on a regular contract. They simply employ the person on endless temporary contracts by changing the companies.

This fiction is generally ignored by the authorities which supposedly are there to protect workers, but really just protect thieving bosses.

We do not know the scale of the wage theft in all of Poland, but the four workers who protested on May 31, were owed at least 40,000 zloties by Ochrona Mega and more money by Proteo. Most of them have court orders to be paid but the K. family simply ignore this.

We decided to go to the registered address of Ochrona Mega Marcin Kowalski, which happens to be a fancy house in an enclosed estate outside Warsaw. Although they were home during the protest, they refused to speak to the protestors, instead trying to get their private security guard to chase us away. No chance.

Since they don't want to talk to the workers who they owe money to, we informed the whole neighborhood, putting leaflets about this in every mailbox and speaking to neighbors and passersby about the people hiding in their neighborhood. We also explained how these people have misappropriated public money since the government pays subsidies to companies that hire people with disabilities. People with disabilities in turn are frequently abused and become victims of unscrupulous wage thieves.

We explained to the neighbors that they can expect to see us back after the holiday weekend and that next time they can expect more people and more noise.

We also said that we need to put pressure on the agency that pays subsidies to wage thieves because it is completely unacceptable that money that should be used to help people instead goes into the private pockets of people like this, who live in luxury houses while the workers don't have money for food or rent.