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Managing director Sander-Knauer:
Blackmail attempts by employees
Photo:
Jörg Müller / Agency Focus / DER SPIEGEL
When the innkeeper Axel Arnold (*) needed a new dishwasher after the lockdown, he had adventurous conversations.
"You officially pay me 450 euros," demanded one applicant.
"I'll get the rest of it black. Otherwise the job won't be worth it."
Another brought along the income tax statements from a previous employer.
"That's the amount they officially transferred to me," he explained.
"That's how it should work for you too."
Arnold reports that he has had dozens of such applicants, and he sounds frustrated.
He got rid of them all and often washed the dishes himself during this time.
And that hasn't changed over the summer.
"It is currently hardly possible to find legal workers," says Arnold, who runs his restaurant in Hamburg's Speicherstadt.
"This is also the fault of all the colleagues who are not very embarrassed about illegal work."
There has always been talk in gastronomy.
There have always been innkeepers who paid taxes on 100 pizzas, although it can be proven that they had consumed 1,000 pizza boxes.
Or who "carried the cash out the back door while customs rushed in through the front door," as an experienced restaurateur puts it.
Undeclared work was as essential for business success as the fat in the pan.
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