International labour protest at jewellery chain Lovisa

The employees of the Lovisa jewellery chain are staging international protest actions this weekend. In Belgian shops, staff are on strike on Friday. In the Netherlands, employees are informing customers about their poor pay.

“Stop the merry-go-round”

Employees of the fast-fashion jewellery chain Lovisa, which took over part of the European shops of Six and I Am in 2020, are joining forces across borders for an international protest action, held in Belgium and the Netherlands among other countries.

On Friday, the employees of the Belgian shops will go on strike. They will hold a symbolic manifestation in front of the shop in Brussels on that day. In the Netherlands, there will be no strike, but on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, staff will organise a ‘speak-up’ action: employees will hand out leaflets and explain to customers the malfunctioning of their shop. Dutch employees will also refuse to help out in Belgian shops during the strike.

Staff are being underpaid, the unions complain. According to the Dutch trade union FNV, payments are not made properly and the minimum wage is not respected. “The management of Lovisa is only thinking about profit and does not even manage HR matters, such as handing out pay slips. They constantly attract new recruits and then drive them away by not paying or paying too little. We are now campaigning to stop this merry-go-round,” says Linda Vermeulen, director at FNV.

Not the first time

The complaints are hardly new, as the Belgian branches have already gone on strike once before, at the end of January. “People work here without a contract, the rules are not respected and even those who test positive with Covid are forced to come to work”, a store manager said at the time.

Trade unions in both Belgium and the Netherlands are also calling on the government to act. It seems that the Australian owner, Lovine, is hardly responding to complaints from within the company. Lovisa has 449 shops worldwide, including eleven in Belgium and five in the Netherlands.