medion/muelheim (1)

text in german
From the hotlines-leaflet no. 1 on working hours (October 2000):

Loosing your mind in 50 hours

The workers at Medion Technologie Center (Muelheim/Ruhr) do technical support and all kinds of services that Medion creates by selling computers, peripheral devices and electronic consumer goods. The wage in the first level (welcome desk) is about 17,50 DM, in the second level 20 DM an hour.
End of last winter there was a promotion at Aldi (supermarket chain) and new people were hired. No holidays were permitted and everybody had to do extra shifts. We work 40 hours a week, which is asking a bit too much anyway. Every third week we have to work a "compulsory Saturday", too. The Sundays are so to speak voluntary. For the promotion days (6 weeks!) the early shift was asked to work every Saturday and the late shift on Sundays - without any changes concerning the "compulsory Saturday"! Everybody had to work at least once for 13 days in a row, with just one day off afterwards. On top of that the call volume was a lot higher.
The morale amongst the workers was bad but nobody suggested to occupy the bosses' office or to refuse working overtime. On the contrary, some of the "older" workers told the others that during the last promotion they had worked 3 weeks without a day off, and 9 hours a day. We should be grateful that we would get a day off in between this time. Angry as we were, that took away the bit of courage we had. Feeling isolated, some chose the last escape and called in sick.
Many have left the company after the promotion. But an unanimous action during the promotion could have changed the situation in our favour. At the moment the personnel department has difficulties finding enough people for the job. And the management would not have been able to quickly organize a call center of scabs.
Well, the next promotion will come soon...
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