How to deal with disrespectful, unreliable employer?

Question

I recently took a temporary job in a family-run bakery shop. It was agreed on that I work for the first three days on probation and - if deemed helpful - could continue on a two-day-per-week basis. The payment for those three probation days would be half of one of the normal days. This agreement was not in written form.

After the first month (6 (3+3) days of work), I started inquiring about receiving my first paycheck, but was put off until a future day. After repeatedly asking, I finally got payed for the probation days only, but also fired because I created too much hassle to my employer.

I was told that I would receive the remaining 3 days of payment via bank transfer at the end of the month.

Now I am faced with several problems:

• How can I react appropriately should I not receive the remaining payment?
• How can I warn others about this fraudulent employer, who shows the same disregard towards his other non-family employees?
• How can I properly sanction the behavior of said employer? Is it fair to drop negative votes on rating pages?

Some further information for you to consider:

• The bakery is run by a family and while some of them might show similar characteristics as the head of the family, the others might not deserve to face the same consequences as him (e.g. lower revenue due to bad ratings).
• There seem to be employees in their shop under even more dire conditions: foreign, not speaking the local language, has to work up to 12 hours per day, no social contacts out of work, probably illegal, desperately asked me for help right before I got fired (but not the reason for my firing)

Answer 1

How can I react appropriately should I not receive the remaining payment?

Not a lawyer, but do you have any proof of the times you worked? Even a simple text message or email would do. Also when you asked for payment, do you have any proof? Even if you have something as simple as, "We'll pay you later." that would be sufficient proof.

At the very least, you should contact a labor board in your country/state and explain the situation. You can get a lawyer for the time you didn't get paid but for so little money (2 days a week), is it worth it?

How can I warn others about this fraudulent employer, who shows the same disregard towards his other non-family employees?

A review site similar to glassdoor. Also yelp reviews or whatever similar in Germany.

How can I properly sanction the behavior of said employer? Is it fair to drop negative votes on rating pages?

Yes, not paying for time work is a serious offense and should be a warning to others.

Answer 2

How can i properly sanction the behaviour of said employer? Is it fair to drop negative votes on rating pages?

The best you can do is move on and look for other job better fit to you. Good thing this was just a temporary job.

Fair? Yes, it is fair for you to have a chance to warn or somehow help this employer improve.

However, I'd be careful about doing that. For that matter, I'll quote a part from an older answer of mine:

It seems that according to this article from last year, the Federal Court decided that post may not be too anonymous after all, as the government could compel Glassdoor to provide user info for investigations.

And also redirect you to this question for you to consider further, Are there any down-sides or reasons not to leave anonymous reviews on sites like Glassdoor?

Answer 3

Since I don't live in Germany I can't answer your first 2 questions, but as to the 3rd, i.e. should you leave a negative review on rating pages, if the employer is listed on any sort of online employment websites (e.g. Glassdoor), then absolutely you should. Those websites are specifically for the purposes of voicing and informing others about concerns like this.

As for non-employment-related review pages, I might stay away from those, because those are for the customers (or potential customers) to read and nobody there is interested in your employment dispute. If you noticed particularly poor treatment across the board to all (non-family) employees, then you might want to post in that capacity, but I don't think you should post your specific situation.