Kryminologiczne aspekty pracy przymusowej w Polsce
Authors: Łukasz Wieczorek  
Published: July 2024

The article discusses some of the findings of research carried out in 2008–2012 on forced labour in Poland. The research was done using triangulation methods and consisted in an analysis of seven criminal cases concerning human trafficking with a view to forced labour examined by Polish courts and prosecutors’ offices in 1998–2012. Interviews with experts and practitioners working to eliminate human trafficking (29 interviews) and with victims of forced labour in Poland (4 interviews) were also conducted. I also used a content analysis method to study press articles on forcing people to work in Poland and forcing Poles to work abroad that had appeared in the Polish press in 1997–2012. A total of 224 press articles were examined. Another source of information about forced labour in Poland, or rather about the social perception of this phenomenon, consisted in qualitative field research done in 32 localities across eight Polish provinces. This included a total of 137 conversations and interviews.The findings indicate that the problem of forced work doubtless exists in Poland, although it is difficult to gauge its actual scale. At the same time the phenomenology of forced labour that I present indicates that there are many aspects to forcing someone to work. Those who fall prey to forced labour include both Polish nationals and foreigners (Poles are generally forced to work abroad, while foreigners are subjected to forced labour in Poland). The age and sex of the victims is also irrelevant, as both young and middle-aged persons and both men and women are forced to work. There are many ways of recruiting and then of forcing one to work. In fact, it would be hard to enumerate all the methods employed by perpetrators to make their victims work. It is therefore impossible to indicate any specific group of people that would be particularly prone to this practice, as anyone can become a victim. The same goes for branches of the economy – it is impossible to indicate any one area that would be particularly susceptible to exploitation and forcing individuals to work. Research findings indicate that in Poland forced labour occurs in agriculture, construction, shipbuilding, textiles, sales, and services (particularly housework). Drawing on B. Andress’s idea of the continuum of exploitation (B. Andrees, Forced labour and trafficking in Europe: how people are trapped in, live through and come out, International Labour Office, Geneva 2008), I discovered that when it came to forced labour in Poland there was a distinctive succession of phases at play before people were actually forced into labour. In other words, ‘employers’ used various types of violence, threats or ruses to test the employee’s susceptibility to exploitation, trying to find out to what extent they could make the person work harder, while at the same time increasing the conditions of enslavement eventually resulting in forced labour. This finding is important when it comes to the scope of the legal provisions penalising human trafficking and forced labour in Poland. In their current wording, these provisions do not include behaviour such as progressive exploitation.My research clearly shows that Polish law enforcement and work inspection agencies have difficulty identifying cases of forced labour. Cases were often discovered by accident or by a coincidence as a result of which police agencies received information about a particular situation. Another weak spot in the identification of such cases is the lack of police intelligence about work agencies bringing foreign workers to Poland, particularly from Asian countries. Another issue is the lack of any regulation that would clearly and unequivocally penalise forced labour. The field research seems to indicate that law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges are not familiar with the phenomenology of forced labour and do not always consider it a form of human trafficking, particularly when the victims arrived in Poland via legal channels and/or were not sold. The ineffectiveness of the Polish system of eliminating forced labour and human trafficking is another problem due to the lack of joint action by law enforcement and the judiciary. The ineffectualness of law enforcement agencies isn’t only due to poor organisation and lack of human resources, but also due to a lack of instruments and procedures for detecting these kinds of crimes. Finally, low social awareness of the problem and social consent to people being exploited in the work setting are another aspect making it difficult to eliminate forced labour in Poland. The awareness of the foreigners themselves is another issue. They often come to Poland looking for work and agree to poor working conditions, hoping to earn more than in their home countries.