Protests over salaries: Wolt couriers in Prague, rubber factory workers in Žatec
Strikes due to too low wages are something that has basically disappeared from the Czech Republic in the last two years. But with the advent of high inflation and sharp declines in real wages, the activity of trade unionists and people who think they are not fairly compensated is also increasing. This is well documented by two protests that are taking place simultaneously: the couriers of the Wolt transport service met in the center of Prague, and hundreds of tire factory workers did not start work in Lunsk.
At the Nexen factory near Žatec, 190 people out of a total of 1,100 employees went on strike on Tuesday, but other workers are said to be supporting their actions. Unionists have been threatening to do so for almost a year. The reason for the protest is the effort to conclude a collective agreement, which would address, among other things, wage increases.
The South Korean company mentioned the loss that it is currently in reality and that it has raised wages for all its employees in the past. Unions, on the other hand, claim that the wages of a large proportion of workers have not increased since 2018. According to data from the annual messages in the Collection of Nexen documents in 2021, it reported a profit after taxation of over 709 million crowns, but a year earlier it was in a loss of 1.4 billion crowns. “I wouldn’t say that the company is doing so badly,” the chairman of the KOVO Trade Union, Roman Ďurčo, responded to management’s arguments.
The demands of the unions based on the collective agreement include, among other things, an increase in wages by 8.3 percent, a twenty percent supplement for the night shift and weekends or two kroner in addition to the hourly rate of the changers, the unionists said earlier. They estimate the company’s daily loss at 15 million crowns, the company talks about up to 20 million crowns a day. Nexen representatives want to come up with a proposal for a solution within a week.
In Prague on Wenceslas Square on Wednesday morning, couriers of the Wolt application started their protest, about a hundred of them gathered. Similar to the strikers in Nexen, they are also concerned about the amount of remuneration, but the circumstances are different – the organizers of the protest said that Wolt unilaterally changed the system and that the financial remuneration for deliveries of most couriers was reduced by around 20 percent. According to them, after accounting for inflation, the income of couriers fell by up to 50 percent.
The participants of the protest arrived at Wenceslas Square wearing blue jackets with the logo of the Wolt company. Some even came on bikes. They brought with them banners with inscriptions such as A courier is not a slave or Wolt = miserythey blew whistles and called out various slogans, most often heard “shame”.
The company said in protest that it had changed the remuneration model in order to achieve a fairer level of remuneration and was based on regular questionnaires among couriers. He expects the earnings of couriers to rise soon. The firm also said that couriers have long demanded that rewards be determined based on the length of the route or after displaying the amount for delivery before accepting orders. Wolt has over 7,000 couriers in the Czech Republic and conducted a questionnaire survey among 1,000 respondents, most of whom positively introduced changes in perception.
For companies that rely on the services of couriers, often operating as self-employed entrepreneurs, adjustments to systems that change the way they are paid tend to be a sensitive topic. The last thing about it convinced the online supermarket Rohlík a year agohis move also provoked the temporary disapproval of at least his associates.
With the use of CTK.