Government inspectors are investigating accusations of human trafficking and exploitation made by 20 asylum seekers and a group of Ukrainians who worked as cleaners at the Ibis Styles hotel in Arnhem.

The people involved were recruited on the street by people allegedly acting for the German cleaning company AHR Clean and put to work at the hotel without proper paperwork or contracts.

Some of the cleaners were paid in cash, earning just €4.50 per room, while others were not paid at all, they told current affairs programme Nieuwsuur.

“This is a very serious case,” Anna Ensing of campaign group Fairwork said. “These people have been actively recruited with promises about salaries and the proper papers which were not kept. It just shows once again that there are companies that are willing to exploit vulnerable people to make money.”

The people involved did not have a work permit which is compulsory in the Netherlands for people from outside the EU and for asylum seekers.

Despite the lack of a work permit the workers were given a contract but these were found to be directly translated from German and contained terms such as “mini-job”, a German term for flexible labour. “That term is not included in Dutch law,” labour law expert Niels Jansen said.

Union CNV legal experts said the contracts were not worth the paper they were written on and the German company is not registered with the Dutch chamber of commerce, which is a requisite.

“Unfortunately, we see these constructions more often in the bigger cities. There is a lack of people to do the jobs,” union official Jan Kampherbeek told the programme.

The Ibis Styles hotel is part of hotel chain Novum Hospitality, which has 130 hotels, mostly in Germany. It said the issue is a matter for cleaning company Ö&I Clean Group GmbH which in turn pointed the finger at subcontracted cleaning company AHR Clean UG.

Permits

AHR Clean said they were in the process of getting a work permit for some of the workers but that these were taking too long. According to Ensing, companies are using “complicated routes on purpose to make fraudulent practices easier. “Everybody is pointing the finger at someone else”, she said.

Some of the cleaners, who live at refugee accommodation in Arnhem, have been paid after inquiries made by Nieuwsuur but many are still waiting for their money.

The case is similar to that of a group of cleaners working illegally for a gym in Amsterdam, although there the accusations of human trafficking were not substantiated.