Posted on 01/25/2016 8:55:29 PM PST by nickcarraway
A Swiss cleaning firm working for McDonald's is in trouble after promising refugees work permits if they worked for free for three months.
“At first I thought it was normal to work for free in Switzerland to get a residency permit. My friends at the refugee home also did it.â€
These are the words of Yusuf, a young man from Sudan who worked cleaning McDonald's restaurants “non-stop†and “without breaks†for some 40 days with just four days off in late 2014 and early 2015.
Yusuf was not paid for any of this cleaning work because his employer – a subsidiary of Swiss firm Top Clean Reinigungen GmbH – had offered him a chance at obtaining a B permit, which allows people to live in Switzerland for up to five years.
The Sudanese man, who currently holds an F permit allowing him to stay in Switzerland on a provisional basis only, believed he would only be paid once that B permit had been organized.
It wasn’t until a fellow resident at the refugee home where he lived explained that if his boss had yet to provide him with a contract or pay him, he was unlikely to do ever do either.
The two men then reported the cleaning firm to Swiss union Unia which investigated the case and recently reported on it in its magazine Work.
When Yusuf went on to demand 6,868 Swiss francs in wages from the cleaning firm, his manager offered him 3,000 francs, but also demanded he retract his complaint. He refused.
Speaking about the case, the media spokesperson for McDonald's in Switzerland, Aglaë Strachwitz, said the restaurant chain had no direct connection with the cleaning company in question, and that such services were contracted out.
The Geneva McDonald's franchise group in question has now cancelled its contract with Top Clean after the firm failed to answer the companies questions “to our satisfactionâ€, Strachwitz added.
Lawyers for Top Clean have chosen not to speak publicly about the case.
“There’s no way I am going to fall for this again. I only hope I can find a paying job soon. There must still be decent bosses in Switzerland,†Yusuf told Work.
Now that’s funny!
This is ingenious. Just tell them they can have 5 rape breaks a day and they’ll do it for nothing!
LOL .. nice
Isn’t that how the UN hires peacekeepers?
I bet you that the firm is owned by a Muslim.... scams like theses usually happen to people from the same ethnic back ground as the one being scammed.
Exploiting these people is wrong. Europe should send them home, but sleazy companies should not abuse them.
Why not? Turnabout is fair play.
I agree.
It happens in the USA as well. The government requires many companies to use minority and female owned suppliers. A company can easily outsource cleaning services to a minority owned firm and save money by doing it. The minority firm hires illegals and pays them below market wages in cash with no benefits.
BINGO! The ethnicity of the scamster is conveniently not disclosed. The most horrendous employment abuses I encountered over 30+ years of experience invariably involved minorities (usually immigrants) abusing their own. They obviously are trusted more by their people...
With the level of employees available here in the USA, I like this method of ‘Probation’.
I once interviewed for a bookkeeper job as an independent contractor. The owner did NOT want to pay me the amount of money I was asking per hour. Mind you- he didn’t have any overhead tied to my pay, either.
I said—I will work for 1 week—5 days—and IF you think I am not capable to do this job, you owe me nothing. You get 40 hours of free work.
IF you are happy with the work, you pay me what I want & I get a 30 day review for a raise & a 60 day review for another raise.
I got 3 raised within 60 days.
However, this was also in the prime time of the Pyramid Schemes —1980-—& this man was running about 5 different Pyramids. He had badgered every single other person working there into ‘investing’ in his Pyramids. I refused——over & over & over again. I didn’t want any part of it all.
He got mad & fired me because of that. I never looked back.
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