Wroclaw, Poland – Rocio Flores, a 44-year-old mother of three, stood trembling in the bathroom of a dilapidated country house in Blaszki, a village in central Poland.

Her breath was shallow as her heart pounded. Minutes earlier, a man from the agency she had been working for had waved a gun at her and five of her Colombian coworkers. It was August 2023.

“In my homeland, Mexico, when a man reaches for his gun, it is because he wants to use it,” she told Al Jazeera. “I thought I was going to die there, I thought my body would be thrown into the cornfields, and I would never see my children again.”

The dispute began when the agency representative announced that the workers’ shifts at the Plukon chicken processing plant would be extended to 12 hours due to staff shortages. The group had re

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