Negative discrimination at the workplace, “undercover testing”

This method of testing can not only be used during the process of applying for a job. There are instances when we are not interested in whether a company hires Romas or not, but we would like to know the internal relations in the company and how people there relate to Roma workers. It can happen that although the company employs Roma workers, their working conditions are worse, perhaps they receive lower wages or the treatment they receive is inhuman and humiliating. Upon such a complaint the purpose of fact-finding is to investigate the workplace from the inside, which can only be carried out if we can have someone hired for a job there. The most ideal is if we try to place a Roma and a non-Roma tester into a job, as in certain cases we would like to find out if there is a difference between the situation of Roma and non-Roma workers. This type of testing can only be used if the fluctuation of workers at the company complained about is high. A constant fluctuation is characteristic primarily for larger factories and plants that hire new employees practically every day.

In one of our cases a young Roma girl turned to us because of an accident she has suffered at work as a result of which she lost the tops of her 2 fingers. The girl who was only 19 at the time suffered a 20% decrease in her capacity to work and fell into posttraumatic depression after the accident. When we spoke to the plaintive she told us that she has never been taught how to handle the machine which caused the accident. She also informed us of the appalling working conditions, the inhuman treatment she received and it turned out employment at the company was not in accordance with the law. Our office asked a Roma journalist to travel to the location, apply for a job in the factory and spend there a week at least as just another worker. Prior to starting the task, our tester received detailed instructions according to which she had to document her observations every single day. During the course of testing we have collected several pieces of evidence on how the company breaks the regulations on worksafety and labour hygiene, and the legalities of employment. We used up our tester’s observations – particularly those that referred to the disregarding of training the workers for operating the machines and the disrespect of worksafety regulations – in the compensational procedure that we later initiated against the company.

In another case we have planted 2 Roma testers in another factory about which we received the information that although it employs Romas, their number cannot exceed 10% of all employees. We will expand this case in greater detail later on in our study, here we would just like to illustrate the experiences of our testers.[1] After spending a week at the workplace our testers reported that they did not experience any racial discrimination, but they did see other disorders. According to their account many people worked in the factory without a labour contract, and they did not even know how much money they were going to receive. Our testers handed in their resignation on the last day of the working week. They then received, along with the papers on the termination of labour relations, the subsequently drawn up labour contract. It became evident that the factory does not comply with labour protection and labour safety regulations. The workers work in an unhealthy environment without suitable protective clothing and protective tools. In connection with the ethnical composition of the workers they established that the proportion of Roma workers is insignificant, it does not even reach the 10% that the director stated.

This form of testing requires extreme discretion and organisation. It is important for our testers to be suitable prepared and armed with the detailed instructions, according to which they have to observe the conditions of the workplace. They also have to know what they should document from their observations and how. If the case concerns a company in the countryside the accommodation of the testers has to be organised, along with their travelling to and from work. Their daily costs have to be estimated and most importantly: we have to keep in touch with them over the phone on a daily level. Considering the difficulties of organising an “undercover testing” and its considerable costs, we only apply this method in extremely well-founded cases.

Rarely although but it does happen, that we can prove that at a workplace they treat Roma workers differently than his non-Roma co-workers without undercover testing. Since most workplaces do not hire people every day – which is needed for us to be able to carry out testing – we have to be really thorough in searching for other evidence. This other evidence is primarily made up of different testimonies, and perhaps existing official documents (labour contracts, employer’s instruction, perhaps the copy of the complaint previously handed in by the employee, minutes, etc).

Our client R. Ibolya worked for an association for nearly seven years as an employment and social advisor. Her employer usually provided her with a short, but fixed term contract, but on 31 January 2003, her contract was no longer extended. She was the single employee at the association with a Roma origin. Although her colleagues worked with fixed term contracts as well, the association allways  hired them for a one year period, despite the fact that they preformed the same work under the same title. The claimant has also informed us that during her employment, her supervisor provided her with less favourable conditions to work under than her colleagues. For examle, she was the only employee at the workplace, who was not given a key to the work premises, therefore – regardless of  how much work she had to do on a given day – she could not enter her office early enough to start working. She had to wait on the street until one of her colleagues arrived. If none of her colleagues went to work, she could not work eighter, since she was not allowed to stay inside the premises alone. Despite this fact, she was required to fulfil the norms set for her by the association. She could only solve this problem, by receiving  her clients at her home, using her own telephone line for work related purposes. Her employer did not reimburse her for these expenses. She was prohibited to receive some of her clients in her office and was required to see them in the corridor. This restriction applied to Roma, who represented the majority of her clients. Her supervisor also prohibited her to talk to Roma clients in their mother tongues, and had warned her  several times when she violated this regulation. The woman has made a number of verbal complaints to the head of the local Roma council and the mayor of the town with regards to the less favourable working conditions that she alone  was subjected to within the association. The head of the local Roma council attempted personally several times to hold reconciliation talks with the supervisor for and on behalf of the claimant.

In the case of R. Ibolya, when the different piece of evidence were juxtaposed and examined, it became evident that she was treated completely differently than her non-Roma colleagues: her contract was valid for a shorter period of time, she could not stay in the office alone, she had to see her Roma clients in the hallway and she was the only person who had no keys to the office. Her statements were verified by her colleagues and former Roma clients. As she has already turned to several forums, several times about her mistreatment, she also had indirect witnesses. We initiated legal action, which ended with the respondent company offering a settlement. We will come back to this settlement later on in this study.