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More trouble for Agmaz as another drivers’ strike begins

Around 3 months after finally managing to negotiate an end to its last truck driver strike, troubled Polish haulage firm Agmaz is now facing another strike - at the same rest area where the previous action took place.

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According to a local radio station, police have confirmed that Agmaz truck drivers have gathered again at the Gräfenhausen-West service area on the A5 southbound.

As of this morning, around 7 drivers were said to be taking part in the action. However, an officer has told Hit Radio FFH that more lorry drivers are expected to join their colleagues.

A striking Agmaz truck driver also told one of the radio station’s reporters that he expected another 30 drivers to take part in the strike.

The drivers claim they have not received a salary for May, according to the police statement provided to FFH.

Readers may recall that Agmaz were at the centre of a long-running saga in which several of their drivers parked up in a rest area for several weeks. Agmaz infamously tried to use a security company to push the striking truckers aside and get its vehicles back. Police nonetheless intervened, and with unions coming in to provide support to the drivers, the Polish company ended up having to pay up and negotiate a settlement.

60 drivers received the wages they were due, and it was agreed that no legal action would be taken against the truckers. It is understood that a number of those 60 lorry drivers also used the opportunity to leave Agmaz and look for work elsewhere.

The claims regarding a lack of payment are almost identical to those that sparked the last strike. We are now in mid-June, and the striking truckers claim they haven’t yet received their wages for May.

In an interview with the Polish press in April, Łukasz Mazur, who runs Agmaz, said that the company’s drivers had all signed up to payment terms of several weeks. Offering an example, Mazur said that salaries for January were paid on March 15th.

Mazur told Onet that the one-and-a-half-month settlement period is due to the time it takes to receive documents from drivers and verify them. The haulier claimed that only on this basis can the company settle accounts with drivers and its clients from Europe. This arrangement, Mazur told Onet, was accepted by some Agmaz lorry drivers for 6 years prior to the last strike action.

Despite Mazur’s claims, Agmaz did end up paying its drivers in full to end the strike. It remains to be seen how the Polish haulage company will deal with the industrial action this time round.