How many are Polish and what is the treatment of Polish workers?
would you say good, fair, bad? does everyone work together for fair practice?
didnt clarify this- how many in the uk ..
the uk is full of immigrants, muslim, poles, etc.. same as the states , to which in my work place, most of my co-workers have some background of polish but no one is from Poland directly except one girl I know named gosia who came around 10 years ago .
for other nationalities , i say at least 3 percent average and the treatment overall is exceptional. at least what I have observed.. I am sure there are some bad incidents in all areas.
From what I've seen... most Poles are treated pretty fairly. But then in the jobs I do... we all do pretty much the same... you can't really pick on someone in a packing line, and make them work any harder, faster or whatever... it's just a packing line.
I think with those Poles I have worked with, some have been happy go lucky, some right miserable sods. And inbetween. And people take them for that. If they yap on the line, then they're liked, if they scowl, they're scowled back at.
Most Brits don't give 2 fucks where someone is from... as long as they're ok.
As for percentages of workers. Hard to say. One place was mostly British, with a smattering of Poles but in highly sought after electronics positions that the Brits had no training in, so for the specialised stuff, 100%, as part of the factory, probably 1%.
Today...in the magazine factory.... about 10%. Maybe.... but not so much on my shift, but i recognised a lot coming onto the next shift, and they were mostly Polish. (from the Pizza place... they're at the magazine place like me, cos work has dried up where we were last week)
Last week... hard to judge. 3 shifts over 24 hours. About, maybe, 50 - 70 Poles. Some days less. As a percentage of the workforce, erm... no idea.. too big a place to know. On my line, on one night, I was the only non-Polish one there and spoke more Polish that night than I did English.
3 years ago, I met my first Poles, and they were a novelty... now... much different. :)
I think it depends (unfortunately) on the industry... I work for a huge company (FTSE-100) so I would be here until Christmas 2198 working it all out, but there are no Poles in my team. However our company cafeterias are many staffed with Polish, and I know of about six other Poles in my building working in 'white collar' roles, two of which were originally working the cafeteria, but successfully applied for new roles.
In a company of about 35 people, we have 3 Poles full time. When you add the fluctuating number of temps, the Pole quantity can increase by another 4, although recently there have been more Slovakians and Lithuanians.
I could also add that there are 2 Hungarians, a Sri Lankan and an Australian. There have also been Germans, French, Dutch and South Africans. Someone in the company might even be Welsh (Mr. Jones).
Doesn't this give you some sort of special status that might risk being undermined if another Pole were to join?
More importantly, workers of all nationalities are treated exactly the same. The only difference is with the agency staff who are only on worse terms due to the nature of agency employment. This is unfair, but there is the hope for them that someone will reward good work with a proper job somewhere. This has happened in the past where I work.
true ... but over 4 shifts at wincanton in doncaster i would say there was a mixed collective over nationals ... polish (primarily) slovakians.. czech's ... monogolians ... afrikans .. english ... these were the main nationalities i came to know of when i was there.
Majority though are employed via an agency for wincanton .. and some of them esp the Polish are permanent staff members of wincanton now and some even have FLT licences this includes the females i regularly saw three females operating a FLT that went to the height of the warehouse .. some are Health and Safety Reps and First Aiders :D
If you ignore the senior management and directors (easy done) of the place I work then at least 25% of the workforce is Polish, in varying job roles. And it works just fine :)
I work in an office above a factory, almost all of the temps are foreign. But hey even when I say a simple goodmorning or hello they dont bat an eyelid, how wude!
I work in an office above a factory, almost all of the temps are foreign. But hey even when I say a simple goodmorning or hello they dont bat an eyelid, how wude!
you gotto be bilingual, dzien dobre, buenos dias and i thnk in arabic its soemhting like sbahkhairat
that isnt what I was getting at.. in some instances, minorities are treated differently ( unfortunately) and the person who manages is the one who is/has to deal with punishment accordingly.
I have seen in my work witnessed the good and the evil and seen people shot down for not being able to communicate accordingly with the public. to me this is unfair and I have also witnessed the good come out in several who came together to bring this to someones attention.. i just wonder how its dealt with in other countries.. to which I am sure even someone from America would have same experiences with jobs in Europe and or communication ..
Then I don't quite understand what you mean Patrycja. I thought the original question, that I've quoted, meant are they treated any differently to UK workers, in either a more favourably way or more specifically, treated worse.
As I said... in my experience, everyone is treated equally.
I don't think so. However my boss asked me if any of my friends were looking for a job, because he was fed up with some (quote) 'halfwits' working for him.
that might risk being undermined if another Pole were to join?
Since I don't think I've got some special status, there's nothing to undermine, I suppose.
