Zara puts pressure on pregnant women: ”No consideration"

Zara quietly reduces wages, forces pregnant women to work too hard, and manipulates contracts and vacations.

A former employee received too little money and complained:

”Then two suit-clad gentlemen from Spain took me into a small room and asked, 'do we have a problem?' I got scared,” she says.

An investigation by Aftonbladet´s TV program 200 Seconds of Zara, which is part of the world's largest clothing chain Inditex, shows that employees cannot trust the employer.

”No one was allowed to take vacation. Employees are needed in the summer, so it wasn't possible. An older Spanish woman had never had a vacation. She was in her mid-50s and still at the first step of the salary ladder, despite having worked for the company for 20 years," says a former employee.

39 current and former employees tell Aftonbladet about the manipulation and threats if they complain:

"We had to write down our hours on paper with pencil. It had to be pencil. Once I didn´t receive all of my wage, which I asked about. This led to two suit-clad gentlemen from Spain taking me into a small room and asking 'Do we have a problem?' I got scared. After that I wasn't offered an extension," says a former employee.

"We wrote down the hours by hand. They could erase the hours and manipulate the salary," says another former employee.

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Daniel Karakas, ombudsman at the labor union Handels in Gothenburg, says:

"It's very problematic with wages and pay slips. Everything is done by hand, and the salaries often end up wrong.”

"You stay home to care for a sick child for two days and come back to work, but in the system, it shows you've been home for five days," says Karakas.

An employee says:

"The salaries are a disaster. If you don't keep a close eye, you won't notice when the company suddenly reduces your salary for a month. A girl whom the union helped received 8,500 SEK. One month they lowered her hourly wage by 2.50 SEK, then raised it to the correct level, the next month lowered it by 3 SEK. And so on. It was very difficult to sort out.”

"Several didn't receive pay for worked hours. A colleague nagged for months. As far as I know, she still hasn't received her missing wages," says a former employee.

"It's inhumane"

Others talk about how insensitively Zara acts in connection with pregnancies. An employee says:

"When I was pregnant, they didn't consider it at first. They made me rush as usual. I vomited during work hours. After that, I had to sit in a meeting with the managers because they thought I 'didn't have good energy' at work. Many times I cried while at work. I had to work as usual for half of my pregnancy.

The issues surrounding pregnancies are not new. Michaela Berg, now 34, says:

"I was 19 when I worked in the store for six months in Nacka Forum. When they found out I was pregnant, they started messing with me. They wanted me to quit. When I had pelvic pain, my midwife said I shouldn't work as much. But they still put me in the warehouse.

"To pressure a pregnant girl to work her body that way, it's inhumane to me," says Michaela."

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Another thing that Zara has implemented is forced part-time work:

"Those who work there want to work more or have full-time positions but don't get it. They get short contracts, which means they are constantly chasing hours and dependent on the employer," says Handels ombudsman Daniel Karakas.

"You only got one month at a time, and many worked without contracts," says a former employee.

Got fired via e-mail

Employees who work extra hours don't always get paid for overtime:

"I work a lot of overtime, but never get paid for it. Instead, I'm supposed to go home earlier, but I don't have time for that because there's so much to do. And the only ones with full-time positions are those in higher positions, never salespeople," says an employee.

Terminations also happen in an unprofessional manner:

"I got fired via e-mail after six months. Several of us were fired the same day, without any warning. Zara is probably the worst employer I've had," says a former employee.

* This text has been translated with support of ChatGPT and reviewed by Aftonbladet.