In Poland, migrant workers from Latin America report abuse, exploitation
Wroclaw, Poland – Rocio Flores, a 44-year-old mother of three, stood trembling in the bathroom of a dilapidated country house in Blaszki, a village in central Poland.
Her breath was shallow as her heart pounded. Minutes earlier, a man from the agency she had been working for had waved a gun at her and five of her Colombian coworkers. It was August 2023.
“In my homeland, Mexico, when a man reaches for his gun, it is because he wants to use it,” she told Al Jazeera. “I thought I was going to die there, I thought my body would be thrown into the cornfields, and I would never see my children again.”
The dispute began when the agency representative announced that the workers’ shifts at the Plukon chicken processing plant would be extended to 12 hours due to staff shortages. The group had refused and demanded the wages they were owed. A heated argument followed. Then the man reached for his gun.
Al Jazeera has reviewed the video of Flores’s ordeal recorded by one of the workers, and identified the gunman as a Ukrainian. The man was then employed by a contractor company that worked with Jober24, a temporary recruitment agency supplying staff to Plukon.
In the video, following a physical altercation with one of the Colombian employees, the man in question walks to his car and pulls a gun. While cursing the migrants in Polish, he threatens to call the authorities.
“If the police come, you will get the f*** out [of the country],” he says. Four people among the group were undocumented.
Before 2022, it was Ukrainians on temporary permits who powered Polish factories, farms and food plants. But since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian refugees gained greater access to Poland’s labour market and many sought better job opportunities. In search of cheap labour, temporary work agencies began recruiting from elsewhere.
Latin America became the new source. Citizens of Colombia, Peru, Mexico, and other countries from the region could enter the European Union without visas, stay for three months and apply for work permits while already in Poland.
This changed in June 2025, when Poland introduced a new law. Migrants must now apply for work permits in their home countries. There is also now greater oversight on temporary work agencies, which used to routinely break employment and tax laws. Penalties for violations have also increased.
Despite the changes, however, it is still unclear whether the situation of migrant workers will improve.
For Colombians, who have faced inflation, unemployment, and Venezuelan migration back home, Poland seems like a chance for a better life.
Recruitment often begins with local agencies that arrange travel. Those recruited are then handed over to Polish partners.
“Often, people are lied to from the beginning,” said Irena Dawid-Olczyk, head of La Strada, an anti-trafficking group. “Some agencies lend them money for the ticket. That debt ties them to exploitative conditions. It’s a form of bonded labour.”
Official data shows that Poland issued just more than 4,000 work permits to Colombians in 2022. By 2024, the number had soared to nearly 38,000. But in many cases, agencies do not apply for work permits on migrants’ behalf, leaving people undocumented and at the mercy of employers. It is unclear how many Colombians are living without status in Poland.
“We believe that apart from Latin Americans, migrants from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Central Asia are also at risk,” said Dawid-Olczyk. “But many don’t trust the authorities enough to report abuses.”
After the incident, Flores and her colleagues took their video recording to the local police station. According to her, officers located the man, but identified him as a Georgian national and claimed the gun was a toy. They allegedly encouraged the migrants to reconcile with him rather than press charges.
The police told Al Jazeera that they did not pursue the case because none of the group had filed a formal complaint. In a statement to Al Jazeera, the Plukon plant said that the man with the gun was not directly employed by their company or by Jober24.
Eventually, Flores and the others, who work for an outsourcing company, received their payment: 17 zloty ($5) an hour, below the legal minimum wage of 21 zloty ($6) at the time. In their statement, Plukon said that they always paid their workers wages in line with the Polish law.
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