ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A case of misuse of workers and government funds has tainted the reputation of Denmark’s second largest facility service company, reports ECJ correspondent Lotte Printz.

They were going to start a new life in Denmark. But for 149 poor Eastern Europeans their dreams turned into a nightmare. The Eastern Europeans were lured to Denmark by promises of education and traineeships in the cleaning sector. And with prospects of a brighter future, some of them even brought their children.

However, most of these Eastern Europeans ended up doing cleaning jobs for up to 11 hours a day (at weekends some also worked from 8.00 am until 1.00 am) and only going to school for a few hours in the mornings. When classes were not cancelled, which they were on a regular basis, they took lessons in Danish, cleaning and computer skills, but received course certificates for several other subjects -  generating those government subsidies that Danish schools receive when their students complete, in this case, a vocational course.

On top of that, in vocational schemes like this, the company employing the trainees and paying them wages while they take lessons receive so-called VEU (adult and supplementary education and training) reimbursements for part of the pay. So the local branch of the facility service company, Forenede Service, that took on these 149 Eastern Europeans, were refunded 90 per cent of the workers’ pay, amounting to millions of Danish Kroner.

All this according to the Danish newspaper Politiken and the trade union magazine Fagbladet 3F that unfolded the case in a joint series of articles in the autumn and winter of 2016.

In the case that dates back to 2009-2010, it was the local school involved, Nordsjællands Erhvervsskole, that was held responsible by the authorities for a lack of due diligence in administering trainees and courses and was told to pay back more than five million Danish Kroner (nearly €700,000) in government funds. However, Forenede Service has agreed to pay the school approximately 800,000 Danish Kroner in compensation for the reimbursements.

Later, Politiken revealed that the trade union had sued Forenede Service in 150 cases and that Forenede Service had been found guilty in 13 cases of exploitation of illegal workers between 2007 and 2015.

In January 2017 the former Forenede Service boss, Michael Krogh, who was the principal party in the case of the 149 Eastern European trainees and who still holds 13 per cent of the shares in Forenede Service was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and fined 11 million Danish Kroner (approximately €1.5 million) for tax fraud. He appealed the decision, but also withdrew from the board of directors of Forenede Service with immediate effect in order not to damage the company’s reputation any further.

Following this sentence, one of Forenede Service’s customers, the Municipality of Fredensborg, immediately announced it would no longer use its services.

Talking to Politiken, the chairman of the Danish trade association for this sector (SBA), Jørgen Utzon, says such cases are not a general problem in the trade. But as skeletons seem to keep crawling out of the closet, we may not have heard the last of this dirty cleaning business.