GRAEFENHAUSEN (Reuters) – Scores of Central Asian truck drivers who accuse their Polish employer of refusing to pay wages went on strike this week in Germany, where a motorway rest stop south-west of Frankfurt has become the backdrop of a protest over working conditions.
As of Wednesday, some 130 lorries had gathered at the spot in Graefenhausen on the A5 motorway for the strike, which began last week, according to Germany’s second largest trade union Verdi, which is representing the truckers.
It said most of the drivers had not been paid since May. The employer Agmaz, run by the Mazur family, did not return Reuters requests for comment.
It is the latest international truckers’ strike in Germany, a country with an long-established union culture. In April, unions said police were forced to intervene after the company allegedly sent patrols in armoured vehicles to confront striking truck drivers at the same Graefenhausen site.
The German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) is supporting the accumulating number of striking workers, looking for alternative accommodation with functioning toilets and showers.
“We have a situation here that is not sustainable,” said Michael Rudolph, DGB’s chairman for Hesse and Thuringia regions, on Wednesday in a press conference at the rest area.
Rudolph said he hopes to move the protest to a large parking lot in the area. Local residents have been providing the drivers with water and food supplies during their strike, he said.
Regarding the payment demands of the truck drivers, Anna Weirich from the Fair Mobility Network said that the amounts involved were very different.
The drivers said they regularly received delayed payments and often not the amount expected. When questioning their employer about the deductions, they either received no answer or a reference to truck damage, for which there was no evidence.
Following smaller protests in the spring which lasted five weeks, the company finally paid around 300,000 euros.
(Reporting by Maximilian Klaus Schwarz and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, Writing by Rachel More and Emma-Victoria Farr, editing by Aurora Ellis)
