Polish men suffered 'blatant' racial abuse

FOUR POLISH men have been awarded sums of between €4,000 and €10,000 by the Equality Tribunal, which found they suffered “deliberate, blatant and unfettered” racist abuse at work.

The men, who worked as general operatives in an industrial site in an unspecified location, were told they were not to speak Polish to each other on their lunch breaks, were called “f***ing lazy Poles” and were told that Polish food smelled and that Polish people smelled.

Pawel Sierkierski, Rafal Labedzki, Lukasz Jedlinski and Mariusz Kowalski worked for a recruitment agency, Sales Placement Ltd in the industrial site operated by a third party, referred to as Z Ltd, in late 2006 and in 2007.

They gave evidence of having been racially harassed by two co-workers, referred to in the decision as Mr A and Ms B, who were employed by Z Ltd.

Mr Siekerski was the first to give evidence.

“He referred to an incident on January 24th, 2007 when he submitted that his supervisor forbade him from speaking Polish with two of the other complainants, Mr Labedzski and Mr Jedlinski while they were eating,” the tribunal said. She also said to them: “Polish food is stinking like you are stinking”.

In further evidence Mr Siekerski said he was sweeping the floor on February 5th, 2007 with two of his colleagues when they were told by the same supervisor that they were idiots from Poland who did not even know how to sweep a floor.

He said he had told his employer about conditions at Z Ltd. His employer said they knew about the situation “but that they could not do anything about it”.