Poland's government has postponed plans to bestow a coveted honour on a Portuguese business manager who runs the local Biedronka supermarket chain, part of the Jerónimo Martins empire known in Portugal for running Pingo Doce.
In Poland there has been a public outcry over the award as workers at Biedronka have long complained at their exploitation and now they have the backing of a significant proportion of the public.
The ill-tempered stand-off exposes growing tensions between the Polish government’s free market approach to the business sector and those workers who feel the government's policies have swung too far in encouraging unbridled capitalism to the detriment of workers’ rights and conditions of employment.
The public are on the workers’ side, threatening to unseat the ruling Civic Platform party in the national elections set for the autumn.
This Wednesday Poland's foreign minister planned to bestow the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland on Pedro Pereira da Silva, a director of Jerónimo Martins Polska, but the award ceremony is on hold until another “mutually convenient date, which at the moment is not yet known" can be found.
A Biedronka employee group wrote to the Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna in protest at the proposed award.
"You decided to honour a man whose 'outstanding contribution' is the exploitation of thousands of Polish women and men," according to an open letter widely publicised in Poland and beyond.
Biedronka indeed has faced prosecution for crimes against 302 people who claimed they had not been paid for their labour, and for other violations of the Polish labour laws.
Schetyna defended his decision to bestow the award, stating that the Jerónimo Martins group employed over 58,000 workers and that its investment in Poland indirectly had created further jobs.
The Jerónimo Martins website states that in the countries in which its companies operate, the group believes that its history of success is due, to a great extent, to the sense of union and to the strong team spirit experienced in its companies.
Mention of the values of work, discipline, rigour and competence lie alongside a description of its desire for transparency in the evaluation and development of its employees' careers.
Whether Jerónimo Martins will bring down the Polish government is yet to be seen, but certainly it would be a first.
