Violet’s Fight Against GXO and E&A in Tilburg: Worker interview and case description
With support from Vloerwerk & Horeca United
The Netherlands has a booming logistics industry which demands a constant supply of cheap labor. Logistics companies use intermediary employment agencies to recruit migrant workers, mostly from the South and East of Europe, to satisfy this demand for work.
These agencies promise the workers good working conditions, better salaries than they could hope for in their home country, and decent housing; all in one convenient (and temporary) contract. What the workers actually find is that they are trapped in a working contract where their housing and working conditions are completely dependent on their employer. They are one sickness or labor conflict away from becoming jobless and homeless. This setup creates a climate of fear and silence for workers, who are isolated and without contacts that can support them in a foreign country.
There are still no publicly controled agencies that monitor the quality of housing and work for these migrants. Temp agencies and their clients can move in the shadowy stretch between legality and downright trafficking – the constant stream of news articles confirms this.
Violet, a trans woman who fled intense harassment in Greece in search of a safer life, experienced this trap firsthand. She was forced into unsafe men’s living facilities and unacceptable working conditions where she was not allowed to use the appropriate bathroom for her entire shift!
The logistics giant GXO and the employment agency E&A in Tilburg weaponized their incompetence to avoid taking responsibility. E&A and GXO did not merely drop the ball with their duty of care. They actively created a transphobic workplace environment. When Violet attempted to use internal communication channels, management responded by stalling until it was time for her contract to end.
The transphobia Violet experienced did not come from her fellow workers. Instead, the transphobia was structural, and enforced by the negligent behavior of both the logistics multinational company GXO and the intermediary recruitment agency E&A.
As a first step, Horeca United and Vloerwerk reached out to both companies to express concern and demand a response on how GXO and E&A plan to correct this situation. We have received no response. We are not surprised.
We refuse to allow this abuse to continue without a collective response. According to our principles of worker self-representation and direct action, we do not speak for Violet. Below is her story, in her own words.
Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Violet: My name is Violet, I am a trans woman from Greece. I am a refugee* in NL for about 2 months now. I had to flee due to the harassment I received in Greece for being queer, giving up on my education and support network to do so. I used to study Climatology in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki before this and have been working as a content moderator for a climate justice network as a side-job too.
*(N.B.: While refugee has a set legal definition, Violet chooses to identify as a refugee due to the circumstances of her moving aligning with the lived experiences other, especially queer, refugees. So, although the state does not recognize Violet as a refugee, it does not mean that it is the arbiter of who gets to identify as one – rather, it is another systemic failure like the ones that we discuss in this article.)
Q: How long have you worked for GXO?
Violet: I have worked there for 2 months, first in the Picking department and then afterwards in the Returns department.
Q: What did you think of the work?
Violet: As others have said in the past, the work is really fast paced and cuts corners. We are expected to perform at ridiculous rates in order to meet the quotas, rates that I suspect not even GXO thinks are possible to meet. However, other than that and some safety issues with regards to cleaning the lines, the work was surprisingly not that bad itself. I had a lot of time to think about my life, and the interactions with my coworkers were minimal, which I personally prefer.
Q: What were the problems you faced at this job?
Violet: The main issues were with my identity as a trans woman. Despite knowing that I am a trans woman who was planning on fleeing her country due to transphobia, they did not let me know that they were unprepared and unqualified to accommodate me. They registered me as a man, put me in all-men’s housing, my team leaders all knew me and called me by the name I no longer go by, and I was even refused access to the women’s restroom and locker room.
Q: What are your complaints about this job?
Violet: They treat those that work under them like trash, especially if you are a minority. My issues were constantly pushed further and further down the line, always telling me to wait until next week for an answer and then to wait for the week after that, until finally my contract ended and they got to kick me out without addressing anything. I am as of writing this, still waiting on them. Not only did I have to go to the HR office multiple times every week for 2 months, I also ended up underperforming due to the issues I was facing taking a toll on my mental and even physical health, leading to my dismissal from the company.
Q: Can you describe how you decided to contact Vloerwerk/Horeca United about this?
Violet: I do not remember how I found out about you, but initially I was going to go with a lawyer. However every lawyer the transgender support network recommended me was or still is out of office for vacation, and I did not want to leave this mistreatment unanswered. Additionally, I am politically aligned with anarchy in general, so seeing this alternative to statist justice made me really hopeful—and tbh I left Greece in search of hope, too.
Q: What do you want to change about this situation?
Violet: I have 2 friends who are currently living in similar or worse conditions as I was. Our long term goal is to all move to the Netherlands and sort of support each other. This job, as bad as it treated me, got me to move here, so perhaps they will want to also take this step in the future. I don’t want them, or anyone else for that matter, to experience what I had to go through.
Q: What effect did this work situation have on your personal life?
Violet: Mentally speaking, it has been really taxing. I am already on depression medication, have been for a long time, but it has been a long time since I have felt this desperate and hopeless about my future. I was living in a dorm with people who were toxic masc, loud even after midnight, rude, who stole from me and even mocked whatever aspects of myself I couldn’t hide around them, and I only got to move out for my last week.
This meant that for the longest time, I spent my days stuck in a tiny room trying not to be perceived by those around me, which made it quite difficult to connect with people. I was unable to dress the way I wanted to out of fear of further harassment from my neighbors, so even going outside meant I had to filter myself first.
Physically, the work at Picking was especially bad for my back, as the boxes with the clothes would sometimes be so low that I’d have to bend over while kneeling down, or so high up that I’d have to lift the entire box in order to look at what’s inside (a stool was provided on the cart we had, but team leaders admitted to me that stopping, setting up the stool, then putting it away again, is really slow and thus you can’t make quota if you do this).
Q: How can the readers of this article support you?
Violet: First off, boycott H&M and all associating brands if you aren’t already. These companies won’t even pretend to listen to anything but money, so let’s take some steps to ensure this isn’t profitable for them anymore. My current housing and job situations are also shaky to say the least (I found a last minute sublet for 2 months, and no work yet), so if anyone has any advice or offers, gimme.
Q: How has your experience with housing and work been?
Violet: It is horrible. The company holds even more of the cards than usual and can treat you accordingly. Issues at work now affect your housing, issues at your house may affect getting re-hired, and all of that in a 2-month contract that they just renew for 2 more months after, which they only give you 5 days of notice for btw. You are always at risk of homelessness.
They took steps to make the workspace transphobic.
– Violet
Q: What are the specific experiences you have had with transphobic discrimination at this work?
Violet: My coworkers have NEVER been transphobic towards me, even after I started using the women’s restroom and locker room (because fuck those policies tbh). Initially I was going with a mindset of “I may be told that I do not belong here, I may have to defend my right to use this”—but no, nothing. A company that is hiring transgender employees has a responsibility to ensure the workspace is safe and, in case something happens, to support the transgender employee. Instead, E&A and GXO had a perfectly tolerant work environment and took steps to make it transphobic with their policies.
Q: Do you feel that the company has put your safety at risk with these choices for housing and access to work facilities?
Violet: Absolutely yes.
Q: Do you believe/know that there are other workers in a similar situation or who experience homophobic/transphobic treatment?
Violet: The E&A Manager claims there are more, and even outed a gay employee to me for no reason. But even if there aren’t, there might be some in the future.
Our Position: The Fight Continues
GXO and E&A played the ping-pong game of accountability; the warehouse blamed the agency, the agency blamed the warehouse, and Violet’s urgent needs were dragged out until her contract expired. This is a deliberate strategy to exploit the precarity of migrant workers, a direct attack on human dignity and security.
Violet refuses to accept their delay tactics and demands that they take responsibility.
Support by taking action:
Boycott H&M and its subsidiary brands to hit the financial backers of this exploitation where it hurts. Contact their customer service to inform them of bad working conditions in warehouses that carry their products.
Organize the workplace: If you work at GXO or are contracted through E&A, contact us! We want to stand together with all workers who want their voice to be heard.
Support Violet: Violet needs stable housing and safe employment in the Netherlands within the next two months. If you have leads, job offers, or housing solutions, contact our network immediately to connect with her.