Miners from the ”Wujek” coal mine were also employed in their free time (on the basis of separate contracts) by the Phoenix company to extract coal. In fact, they usually did exactly the same job and in the same place as for ”Wujek”. As a result, 46 miners worked day by day (without any holiday) for 19 days in a row (and some of them had such a marathon several times). Among them, there was one who worked 52 days without a holiday, and another who worked as many as 69 days without a day off.
Moreover, there where cases found in which miners started working for the company immediately after they finished at the mine, without taking a rest. The rule of a necessary eleven-hour break between subsequent working days, set fourth in the Polish Labour Law, was breached 103 times, as transpires from the findings of the NIK’s audit.
According to the NIK, these are examples of evading the Labour Law - as miners did not formally work for the same employer, therefore both the coal mine and the company claim they did not break the law. What is more, such practices pose a real threat to the safety of the mine.
In the opinion of the NIK, the lack of rest and increasing fatigue of the miners could be dangerous for both those who worked without a holiday and for their co-workers. In such situations, it is easy to make a mistake, e.g. with regard to reading sensors or operating machines.
