Thread regarding SAP layoffs

That’s a weird story, if true, it could raise so many questions about the real motives of western companies to invest in Ukraine. Ukrainians are clearly used as cannon fodder in a stupid war that should end.

However, many details in this article simply don’t add up. Disability is taken very seriously by companies like SAP (I’m not saying they’re always good, either) but the mix of a recently created union with the election for a coveted position of influence in corporate governance just seems suspicious…

Well, SAP in Czech republic has quite significant Russian community and similar to rest of East Europe Russian are very active in hybrid information war in Czech - creating chaos and using European values against Europeans. DUS is great example, its a fake, shadow organization with no connection to SAP. They are controlled by the influential Russian employee with political ambitions and connection to Russian oligarchy. Only what is ridicules is that SAP has no power protect its employees against such practice. And unfortunately this seems as a systematic practice as there is similar pressure in many German subsidiaries in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately misusing any employee representations institutions.

When thinking about protecting the rights of workers in Europe, we tend to imagine an almost idyllic state of transparency and fair treatment of those who need it most.

There, in the vast glossy world of leading European enterprises, our imagination draws an impeccable balance between the interests of employees and their corporate employers, which is always carefully maintained, or at least does not suffer from practices that are frankly shameful.

And yet, as some Ukrainian war veterans recently discovered who cooperate with multinational companies in Europe, even a superficial review of this imagination quickly demonstrates its fallacy.

It's really amazing how much time is devoted to focusing on corruption in countries outside the European Union, but how little is actually highlighted by the fact that everything is also by no means good when it comes to multinational companies in the EU.

Take, for example, the German SAP SE, a multinational software-creating company that employs more than a hundred thousand people.

Time and time again, the business is shaken by scandals involving dishonest and unaccountable ways of doing business and caring for its workforce, such as when SAP had to pay $220 million to settle a case with an American court, or when two members of the company's supervisory board were fired for corruption.

But when it comes to representing the interests of employees, the company's attitude to the newly established SAP Union of Disabled Persons in the Czech Republic (DUS), which has Ukrainian war veterans among its members and provides various types of humanitarian assistance and employment support, is the latest example of how a European institution that fights for employee rights can fall victim to shameful corporate procedures and relevant behavior of company managers.

Almost from the beginning, SAP's antagonistic attitude of HR towards the DUS union confirmed that protecting the rights of disabled workers in the company will not be easy.

When the disabled union was still in the process of being created, the company asked to confirm that it has enough members working at SAP; and although according to Czech law, this was a legitimate request, the way the company conducted this process was definitely not decent.

To preserve the anonymity of members, in accordance with Czech law, the union proposed to send a list of all employees to an independent notarial service; but over the next two months, one way or another, the company simply did not want to send such a list. Later, the company did apologize for the "misunderstanding", saying that it expected additional steps from the union.

What happened next was even more strange.

After the list of employees was finally sent, the company suddenly invented new rules for notarization, previously unknown to the general practice of working with trade unions.

Also, due to the complex transliteration of some Slavic names of union members, the company used minor inscription differences as a reason to reject applications.

And when the list of union members was already submitted, SAP also asked for testimony of members under oath.

Finally, SAP recognized the DUS disabled trade union, but only two days after DUS published an open letter in the Czech Republic's main business newspaper. It turned out that the Czech SAP office took only two days to do what had been going on for two months!

DUS open letter in the main business newspaper of the Czech Republic

It's hard not to ask yourself what made the company behave like that? For the first time, approve the order and implement it – only to then radically change your own requirements at the last moment, as if doing everything so that the DUS union is not created at all?

Well, the answer is probably as follows.

At that time, elections to the SAP supervisory board were approaching, and a candidate from the Czech Republic was guaranteed a place on the council – potentially a member of the trade union.

The position on the SAP Supervisory Board is accompanied by the provision of great power and 250-400 thousand euros per year for each member for five years. DUS could donate most of this amount to help people with disabilities and Ukrainian veterans.

But when it comes to the composition of the supervisory board, there is hardly anything that scares the management of any corporation more than the place that goes to a candidate from a trade union who really supports the interests of employees.

And so, when the disabled trade union submitted its application for a place on the supervisory board, it met with frankly unethical attempts by SAP CZ management to prevent the union from winning.

As part of the company's attempts to sabotage the union, the union candidate was completely dismissed from SAP CZ three weeks after the official submission of her candidacy, receiving confirmation of submission only two weeks after her dismissal.

Given all this, the authority of a person who eventually got on the supervisory board is unlikely to come as a surprise. Being a favorite SAP CZ management candidate for a place on the supervisory board that was allocated by the Czech Republic, an interesting aspect of Mr. Jakub Czerny's candidacy is that the union that nominated him in the first place was actually under the full control of the company's top management, with the company's deputy managing director as its chairman, and with four senior managers on its board.

The grotesque injustice of all this is only further intensified if we take into account Mr. Cherny's actions during the election. On the eve of the election of the supervisory board, among other things, Mr. Cherny humiliated the disabled of the company when he suggested that the trade union of persons with disabilities, instead of engaging in an election campaign by publishing an open letter, it would be better to buy wheelchairs.

Mr. Cherny also made a number of defamatory statements about the union, for which a pre-trial trial has now been initiated against him, challenging absurd statements that the union spent about 10,000 euros to publish the aforementioned open letter in a Czech newspaper.

One month after the publication of the letter and two days after Mr. Cherny's public attack on DUS, SAP CZ lawyers threatened the union with a lawsuit.

Mixing general comments not related to SAP CZ and misinterpreting the legal communication between SAP CZ and DUS, the company's lawyers did cook the story – but only a week before the deadline for submitting candidates to the supervisory board.

A public attack and legal pressure forced several DUS members to abandon their candidacies.

DUS insisted on public apologies from Mr. Cherny, but, even internally in the local office, apologies were never received. To date, this remains so, even after DUS sent Mr. Cherny a formal pre-trial lawsuit for defamation and defamation.

Meanwhile, DUS responded to all SAP CZ lawyers' claims and clarified some of the misinterpreted messages on its website, www.disability.cz. For the next three months, SAP CZ was silent – before suddenly going to court against the disabled union.

Why did SAP CZ wait so long, until last week, to do that? The answer again concerns the elections to the supervisory board.

SAP CZ initiated a lawsuit against DUS a day after pro-management figures in this story made Mr. Cherny the winner in these dubious elections to the SAP Supervisory Board in the Czech Republic.

So while DUS patiently waited for Mr. Cherny and his apology for libel, at the same time SAP CZ spared no time to prepare a full-scale attack on the union.

In the current situation, when the labor rights of disabled veterans in Europe are not only neglected, but also people like Mr. Cherny are nominated for high positions, it becomes very difficult to take seriously all the external images created by the European corporate world, which, like cheap stage scenery, seem to be able to be snat any moment.

SAP was one of many companies that left Russia at the beginning of the war. Moreover, SAP even actively employed Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic.

But, as in the case of most Western countries, now this support is minimized. But in the case that concerns DUS, SAP CZ and the company's management favorites, there was not even a minimum of decency regarding decent treatment of Ukrainian union members.

So, perhaps, instead of scontempt for and criticizing other countries' attempts to overcome corruption, Europeans should take a closer look at their own internal affairs.

And on the part of Ukrainian disabled people who want to work in Europe, the state of these affairs does not look good at all.