‘If you dunk your entire head in the frying fat, I’ll give you extra money’, the restaurant owner said with a smirk on his face.

‘I will chip in’, added the cook. Two other coworkers chimed in, too.

The seventeen-year-old kitchen help really needed the money. After a few moments of hesitation, he took a deep breath and went in with his whole head. Everyone laughed. 

‘It was one of the most dehumanising things I have ever seen’, says Hannah, a former student from Germany who worked at the Groningen restaurant. ‘That boy came from a difficult background and both he and his family were constantly struggling with money. The boss knew that. I tried to intervene, but my knowledge of Dutch was limited and nobody took me seriously.’

Hannah’s story is not exceptional in the hospitality business – called horeca in Dutch, an acronym for hotels, restaurants, and cafes. International students are in dire need of money and the language barrier leaves them few other job options, so they accept whatever they can get. To make things worse, their lack of understanding of Dutch workers’ rights and their general vulnerability in a foreign country make them an even easier prey for exploitative employers.

The survey

Over the past months, UKrant and Sikkom ran an online and door-to-door survey to better understand the general working conditions of international students in the city. While the results aren’t representative, the 154 responses paint a grim picture.

Over two thirds of respondents claimed to have experienced a form of exploitation in their current or past jobs in Groningen. The most common is underpayment, followed by a lack of breaks, prolonged working hours, poor working conditions, and verbal aggression.

In what field do (did) you work as an international student in Groningen?

n=154, multiple responses possible

Underpaid and overworked

Kate worked for an Asian restaurant in 2018, shifts of twelve or thirteen hours for which she was paid 2.83 euros an hour. The minimum wage that year was 4.33 euros for an eighteen-year-old, increasing to 9.11 euros for anyone twenty-two years and over. ‘After receiving my first monthly wage two weeks late, I went in, asked for the rest in cash and quit on the spot.’

Ivan, a then nineteen-year-old UG student, was made to do undeclared work for a month for about 5 euros an hour – that was his probation period. ‘I quit the job fairly quickly and they refused to give me what I was owed. They said: “We gave you food, you liked that, right? Why do you want money?”’

He had to go back to the restaurant a few times. ‘It wasn’t until I brought a friend that they gave me my money.’

In order to qualify for a student loan from the Dutch Education Executive Agency (DUO), Ivan needed to work 56 hours a month, so he got a job at a different restaurant. ‘The contract said I would work 56 hours a month for 7.50 euros an hour. But they actually paid me 6 euros and I ended up working 70 hours a month’, he says. ‘I was so happy I had found a job with enough hours that I didn’t want to discuss it with my boss. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was like: it’s not a big deal, at least I have a job.’

The contract said I would get 7.50 euros an hour, but they actually paid me 6 euros

Mylo, a Hanze student, was underpaid as well when he started working in the restaurant business four years ago. ‘I was twenty years old and I was paid 5 euros an hour. I didn’t know that wasn’t normal, I come from a poor country.’ At his next job, he earned a bit more. ‘They paid me 6.50 and I was given a 50 cent raise every year, but I was still a euro short of the minimum wage. At some point I earned 8.40, but the minimum was 9.70.’

Still, he accepted it, because he really needed the money.

Former UG student Tiberiu (25) worked as a floor manager in a restaurant in 2021. ‘On average I would work one to two unpaid hours extra a day, and I only got the minimum wage – a little more than 10 euros – even though managers usually get 17 or 18 euros per hour’, he says.

When he threatened to leave after a few months, the owners raised his wage to 12.50 per hour. ‘I was still being underpaid, but I accepted it. On top of that, my workload was double what I was getting paid.’

And then there is Jack, who worked as a delivery courier for a sandwich restaurant. He too didn’t get paid what he was owed. The amount on the payslips was often too low, but complaining didn’t help. ‘One guy once wrote in the group chat that hadn’t received his money and asked if anyone else had the same issue. Management wrote back: “You are ruining the atmosphere, stop crying.”’

No breaks and terrible working conditions

That wasn’t all that was bad about his delivery job. ‘It was terrible in every way’, he says. ‘We weren’t given the right gear to face winter on a bike. Jackets were worn out, they were stinky and never washed. Often we put disposable gloves on our socks to keep our feet warm and dry. We weren’t given rain clothing and we couldn’t even use our own stuff, we had to wear the company outfit.’

The bikes weren’t up to scratch either. Brakes malfunctioned and the batteries were old, meaning they ran out fast.

Mylo also delivered food and had similar experiences. His jacket and rain pants often leaked water. ‘And the gloves weren’t warm enough, so you had to buy them yourself for 50 euros. Bicycles often broke down. I was also forced to drive in the snow, which wasn’t safe. It was scary.’

Taking a break wasn’t an option, he recalls. ‘If you wanted a break because you were freezing due to the bad equipment, they pushed you to continue. And the boss got noticeably worse over time, as if he knew that he would get away with it, no matter what.’

If they would see us eat, they screamed at us

Couriers at Jack’s restaurant were treated just as badly. ‘Even though we were only being paid to deliver food, they made us do anything that came up: we had to clean the toilets, do the dishes. And when they wanted us to get rid of the trash, they would simply open the door and throw it at us. And if we were inside, they would throw it on us.’

Drivers were not even allowed to eat during their shift, which lasted six or seven hours. ‘If they would see us eat, they screamed at us. We often brought along energy bars to eat while we rode our bikes’, he says. ‘In the meanwhile cooks and the floor staff would eat constantly and for free.’

If they were really starving, they had the option of ordering food from the restaurant – that they had to pay for, half of the menu price – but then it was entirely dependent on the mood of the chef if they actually got it. ‘Sometimes they would leave the order until the end of the day. And if they did not like you, they would not make it for you.’

Ivan didn’t get any breaks either at the second restaurant he worked at, though shifts lasted eight hours. He was only allowed to eat anything until after the kitchen closed. ‘The overall working conditions were just shit’, he says. ‘I was forced to put my hands in boiling hot water to wash the cutlery, just because that’s how they always did it. I was frustrated, but they kept pushing me and in the end I got used to it.’

Aggression, bullying and harassment

Ivan now realises that he was a victim of bullying in the workplace. He was being intimidated into accepting an abnormal practice as par for the course. And he’s not the only student this happened to. Simon, one of Jack’s coworkers, recalls that management often spied on couriers with the restaurant’s camera system, to see whether they smoked, ate, or did or said anything else supposedly inappropriate.

‘Once a guy was caught complaining about the rules in the restaurant and he was fired’, says Jack. The harassment did not stop there. ‘Management would write in the group chat: “We have eyes and ears everywhere. If you stop halfway while doing a delivery, we will know.” It felt like Orwell’s 1984: Big Brother was always watching us.’

Jasmin worked in a pizza restaurant as a waitress. She suffers from chronic recurrent UTIs and needs to visit the restroom often. ‘I tried to limit it to once an hour during a five or six hour shift, but one time when I left the bathroom the manager yelled at me. He said taking a pee shouldn’t take more than three minutes.’ 

He was aware of her condition, but was very reluctant about giving her breaks. ‘After a while I had to literally beg for them. Sometimes I’d have to ask three or four times before he let me go to the bathroom.’ He’d then deduct the time from the hours she worked. 

‘The boss’ behaviour was the biggest problem’, confirms her colleague Simone. ‘It all depended on his mood.’ One busy night, he made her believe that the whole kitchen was against her, she says, and that the chefs would leave if she kept working the way she did.

She was shocked. She apologised. And then she talked to the cooks and discovered that it was all a lie. ‘After a couple of days I confronted the boss about it, but despite the evidence, he maintained he was right.’ What finally made her leave, though, ‘was that the chefs did not stand up for me when I confronted him. That killed me’. 

I have recurring UTIs and I had to beg for bathroom breaks

Tiberiu’s time as floor manager also ended abruptly and in a humiliating way. Following a health inspection in November 2021, the restaurant got a 300-euro fine. ‘Considering the conditions they had us work in, it wasn’t that bad’, he says. But that night, he received a text message from the owners saying it was his fault and that he was fired. 

‘The restaurant was closed for cleaning for a day after the inspection and they sent me a bill for 6,883 euros, for the losses of that day’, he says.

Tiberiu was shocked and argued it was not his fault, since he had reported the poor hygiene of the place many times. He explained he didn’t have the money. He even apologised, asking the owners for a second chance. They refused. Finally, he asked for his last payslip before leaving.

‘They refused to pay me, insinuating that I was on drugs and alcohol during my shifts, and that in fact under my management they lost 10,000 euros. At that point I just gave up’, he says. Tiberiu never saw his money. ‘I decided not to answer that provocation; it was too much. But it was painful, especially after I worked my ass off for that place.’

Gavin, who worked with Tiberiu, was also fired by the owners via text message – twice. The first time, he was fired along with Tiberiu. When Gavin asked for an explanation for his dismissal, the bosses blamed it on the new manager – the one who replaced Tiberiu. ‘They told me she didn’t want me, but we were friends, so I talked to her and obviously she denied it.’

Facing the evidence, the bosses hired him again. ‘I came back because I desperately needed the money, but I felt treated like trash.’ 

The second time he just wasn’t scheduled to work. He texted the owners when he didn’t hear anything after the Christmas break, when the restaurant had been closed. He didn’t hear back from them, only to find out through Instagram that the place was actually up and running. When he inquired again, the owners finally responded: 

‘I wasn’t even mad anymore, just surprised at how terrible these people were’, he says.

Hannah knows all too well what it’s like to be harassed by your boss. The manager at the restaurant where she worked, the same man who goaded a kitchen boy into dunking his head in frying fat, targeted her as well, she says. ‘It was more or less fine most of the time, but after a few drinks he and the cooks would sometimes go too far.’ 

The Dutch man in his fifties would not stop calling her schatje (baby/darling). ‘He even did it in front of customers. I confronted him about it several times and asked him to stop, and he got really upset. “I have a wife and kids”, he said.’ 

Once, at a Christmas party with all the staff, he even groped her. ‘He passed me on the way to the bathroom, pretended to bump into me and grabbed my boobs, supposedly accidentally’, she says. She was shocked, but she blamed it on the alcohol and believed him. ‘Looking back now, it probably wasn’t an accident. That makes me angry, because I didn’t do anything about it.’

Harold worked in an Asian restaurant as a waiter. The atmosphere there was always terrible, he says. Yelling and intimidation was a daily occurrence, but management would also manipulate their employees in more subtle ways. They’d help students with something unrelated to the job – some documents, for example, and then use that as leverage.

‘They would be like: we did something for you, now you have to do everything for us’, says Harold. ‘They would force you to do personal chores for them. You felt you had to do it, that you owed them.’

According to the seven other students interviewed who worked in that restaurant, it was a recurring practice.

Discrimination and unequal treatment

One of them is Andreea, who noticed that management also treated Dutch and international employees differently. ‘They had more respect for Dutch staff, because they seemed to think they were better workers, or maybe just because they were harder to exploit.’

That’s something more internationals see. Of the respondents to our survey, 27.9 percent said they had been treated unfairly in comparison to Dutch coworkers, with 23.4 percent claiming to have seen it happen to others. 

Which type(s) of exploitation did you experience in your (current) job in Groningen?

n=154, multiple responses possible

The sandwich restaurant where Jack and Simon worked definitely discriminated against internationals, they say. Jack understands a bit of Dutch and could hear the staff insulting internationals and complaining about them all the time. ‘It felt dehumanising’, he says. ‘For the first time, I understood what it means to be openly discriminated against.’ 

‘I could really feel the difference between Dutch and international employees’, Simon adds. ‘The same thing happened in the other restaurant where I worked. I had this feeling of being unwelcome many times in Groningen.’

Jasmin, who’s half Czech and half Syrian, saw and experienced plain and open racism several times. ‘One customer, a rude real estate owner who rents mostly to students, kept stopping me from working. I stood up for myself and he told me to go back to my own country. He also shouted in front of everyone that I should just learn Dutch.’

I had this feeling of being unwelcome many times in Groningen

Yet her manager didn’t come to her aid, quite the opposite. The man was a good friend of his and so he told her to apologise.  

‘He also never gave us internationals permission to leave work earlier for exams or to catch a flight for example, while Dutch employees were allowed to’, she says.

It’s not just Dutch bosses who exploit and mistreat internationals: several restaurants and businesses mentioned by the interviewees are run by internationals or Dutch people with an international background.

‘The owners of my restaurant were these two rich German students who thought they could use employees and cast them aside as they pleased’, says Tiberiu.

So why are internationals being treated differently? Harold feels it’s because Dutch employees know more about their rights and options. ‘And they don’t need help with things outside of their part-time job as often, so they are less easily manipulated.’

But Simon wonders whether there’s not a different reason for it altogether. ‘It’s a general vibe in the Netherlands’, he says, ‘being treated as a lesser person in these situations. I don’t know if it’s just the job position – dishwasher, waiter, food courier, working in horeca in general really – or if it’s also about nationality.’

Dutch