Mugs Worth Millions, Work for Pennies. The Dark History of Bolesławiec Ceramics. Part One

The media talk about Bolesławiec ceramics primarily in the language of large-company owners. The dominant narrative is money. A headline on bankier.pl reads: “Small Mugs, Big Money.” The headline in Wyborcza Biznes shouts: “Bolesławiec Conquered the World as a Polish Export Hit. Ceramics Are Bought in Korea, America and Throughout Europe.” Forbes talks about the problems faced by the CEOs of the “ceramics hub.” They speak of difficulties with sales markets, a shortage of workers and high production costs.

In 2026, we will pay between PLN 50 and PLN 250 for a single ceramic mug; everything depends on its uniqueness, the complexity of the pattern and where we buy Bolesławiec ceramics. Read who makes them and at what price.

The voice of those who work for a ceramic bowl of rice, decorated with a stamp

To write this article, I spent dozens of hours talking with more than twenty women who told me about their work at the three largest ceramics factories and several smaller ones.
However, this article focuses on the operations of a state-owned company employing around 380 people, including approximately 250 directly involved in ceramic production. Zakłady Ceramiczne „Bolesławiec” (ZCB) will celebrate 80 years of operation in 2026.

The company’s distinctive feature is that its CEOs are always beneficiaries of a political arrangement. An SLD president ran the company until 2008, when the Left was in power; then a PO president led it until 2016, when Platforma was in power; and two PiS presidents served until 2024. After the 2023 elections, as one might easily guess, the company has been managed by a president and a board member from Koalicja Obywatelska.

I was with the workers in courtrooms when they fought to be reinstated; I was at meetings in their homes when they confided in me about the humiliations they experienced at work. I listened to women who waved a hand and said, “It’s in the past,” only to have tears well up in their eyes immediately afterward. They apologized to me for crying and whispered, “I devoted so many years to them,” then apologized again for suddenly being overcome, without reason, saying it was just one of those days, their blood pressure had dropped or it was too hot. And they said that women cannot control their emotions.

I listened to them and felt like Marlow from „Heart of Darkness”, who, on his first day in the Congo, after coming ashore, sets out for a walk to get to know the area and enters a forest of shadows. Black shadows, dying slowly, malnourished, sick and exhausted. They were Congolese people brought from the entire coast under legal contracts by Leopold II’s white subordinates, finally spat out onto a rubbish heap, where they dispose of themselves while, right next to them, the work of their sisters and brothers boils away.

You may think there is too much pathos in this. What could I say in response? I am from here; the Bóbr River is not the Congo in Africa, and my interviewees are white women over fifty, working on piece rates in Poland in the twenty-first century at a state-owned company. They are women who, after 20 or 30 years of work, are still labouring to earn the minimum wage, and every one of them tells me that piecework is a form of slavery. That is why I tell this story in their language.

They do not make TikTok clips about this

It was the women from the ceramics factories who patiently taught me what their work is really like, because although I am from here, I do not come from a ceramics family. I do not come from a home where my mother, father, sister, brother and husband each work or worked at one of the local ceramics factories, or where the whole family worked at the same one.

I had a mistaken idea of their work—almost embarrassing to admit. It was similar to that of a tourist who came to the Bolesławiec Ceramic Festival because she had been lured by pretty TikTok clips. Clips with relaxing music, in which a painter sits at a spinning wheel and places small, colourful stamps on a grey-and-white bisque surface, creating a masterpiece: hand-painted Bolesławiec ceramics. Our pride, our gold, our calling card in the world.

My guides forgive me and say, as if unwilling to shatter my candy-coloured vision, that there are pleasant moments in their work. In the painting room, when the team of women works well together and the supervisor is kind. When they are not split up because they talk too much. On days when the piecework goods are good—that is, when they can be done quickly and the daily quota achieved. The girls tell one another stories while working, laugh and support each other when one of them has trouble with a child, husband or boyfriend. Even if they sometimes quarrel over the better goods, they get along again afterward. On days when they are not bothered by wrist tunnel syndrome, a shoulder injury or back pain... On days when they are not watched on CCTV to see whom they talk to, when a colleague does not eavesdrop on them, when no one whispers that they are next in line to be dismissed because they are active in or support a trade union. On days when management is not informed that they called a board member a pit bull and they are not dismissed because “you have lost our trust”, because “you breached your duty to care for the wellbeing of the workplace, observe the principles of social coexistence at the workplace and refrain from actions disrupting the order and organisation of work”.

My admiration for their work evaporated. What does it mean that you work on piece rates? Why do you have to fight over the goods? This picture fits least of all with my vision of a relaxed artist. What does “a kind supervisor” mean? How are you watched on CCTV? And why do you call a board member a pit bull? And then, with the same patience, they explain to me again what their work involves.

More than 20 women have spoken. There are several dozen hours of material, and I must choose only small fragments and conceal the interviewees’ identities. They did not want me to give their names because they fear retaliation from supervisors, management, the president and the board member. Losing their jobs is a real threat, as cases brought by dismissed workers are already pending in the labour court.

“Above all, people who build the reputation of Polish ceramics through their knowledge and passion”

On the profile of ZCB president Arkadiusz Grzesiowski, I read: “Zakłady Ceramiczne „Bolesławiec” is not only a brand known throughout the world, but above all people who have been creating its unique history for 80 years. (…) We focus on people who build the reputation of Polish ceramics through their knowledge and passion.”

So I listen to how ZCB supports the women who, despite being tired and frustrated, use their knowledge to build that reputation:

– A painter with 35 years of service, who will be honoured this year at the Ceramic Festival during the 80th anniversary of Zakłady Ceramiczne at a special gala at the Museum of Ceramics, earns the minimum wage per month...

– ...all the long-serving painters had their allowances taken away: seniority bonuses, anniversary bonuses, and all of it was supposedly “put” into the piece rates, but it does not translate into earnings now.

I ask what bonuses they mean and which years they are referring to. They reply that the decent bonuses were more than 20 years ago.

– If there were any profits, there was an export bonus and a president’s bonus, and it was really a lot—even 25% of the salary. Later there was less and less, ending at 5%, and now (2025–2026—the editor) the bonus is paid in a very strange way. You have to earn PLN 4,800 gross, because that is the minimum wage, and whatever you earn above that is considered your bonus. But it is not additional money; it is your own money that you earned through piecework. It is simply divided into two categories. PLN 4,800 in one category, and whatever you earn above that in the other, and that is considered a bonus...

– Let’s say a painter earns PLN 5,000 gross. PLN 4,800 is listed as her earnings, and PLN 200 as her supposed bonus. But it is not an additional percentage bonus on piecework; it is still the PLN 5,000 she earned herself.

I ask for details. What does piecework look like when the painted assortment varies so much? Dots, flowers, animals, leaves, stripes, floral compositions... There are hundreds of patterns.

– Take an ordinary mug in basic decoration no. 42. In the past, you had to make about 60 mugs to meet the quota, but now it is almost 100 to achieve that hourly rate.
I stop because I do not understand what the quota is or who sets it. And what decoration no. 42 looks like. They explain. It is the peacock-eye decoration, a classic pattern associated with Bolesławiec ceramics: a cobalt background with white circles and a dot in the centre. I ask a specialist about setting quotas. A former designer who worked at the company from 1974 to 2019 explains to me how quotas were “set” at ZCB.

– Setting quotas or determining working times is speculation. In my time, several painters were given, say, mugs to paint in one decoration. In an hour, one painted 25 pieces, another 20 and a third 15. They were all at a good standard. Then the average was chosen, and this was done for each pattern. The problem is that over the years more patterns have been added; they are more complicated and labour-intensive – explains Janina Bany-Kozłowska.

Could you give up your meal break and eat while painting?

I also ask a psychologist, a doctor of humanities who became an adviser to the Marshal of the Sejm in 2026 and wrote a book about work, „Cześć pracy. O kulturze zap***dolu”. I want to know how science describes and names this kind of work.

– The type of work described by the painters is not merely physical work, in which one usually gives a certain amount of one’s time and performs predetermined tasks in exchange for a predetermined sum – explains Zofia Smełka-Leszczyńska. – It is work that also imposes unpaid duties on the workers connected with managing their own work and figuring out how to earn their salary while juggling tasks. In addition, quotas and patterns change, forcing them constantly to test their own limits in order to satisfy the algorithm converting work into money. These are not only limits related to the standard of performing assigned tasks, but also the limits of one’s own physiology: perhaps you can give up your meal break and eat while painting? Perhaps it is not worth going to the toilet if that means failing to meet the quota? – Smełka-Leszczyńska adds.

After the explanations, I return to what the painters tell me.

– There are decorations you can earn money on and decorations you cannot. It matters how many vessels you receive to paint, and that depends on the order the factory has to fulfil. When I had to paint the ends of series to close an order, I was given one or two completely different vessels and patterns to paint. For that one piece, I had to take out twenty stamps and fifteen paints, go to the storeroom for the stamps, pour out the paints and look up how it was painted, because I did not paint that decoration every day. I would spend an hour on that alone and earn PLN 1.50 for painting it, then change the paints and stamps and paint another one, while time passed. Someone else, meanwhile, received uniform goods in a single decoration, did it quickly and earned PLN 40 an hour...

– Now you have to earn PLN 4,800 gross a month. Every decoration is priced, so you can multiply the price of a decoration by the number of pieces and know whether and how much you will earn that day...

– Everyone working on piece rates wants to earn as much as possible, and in one hand they hold sandwiches while holding a stamp in the other and painting as they eat. They used to send us to the canteen for breakfast, but they quickly abandoned that...

– I will tell you a story about how these quotas are set now, with these more difficult patterns. The designer who came up with the decoration for a teapot herself failed to finish within the time set for painting that shape. If she, who knew her decoration perfectly, could not finish within the prescribed time, within the quota, what is a painter reproducing the pattern supposed to say? Well, hello? What is going on there? So where do they get these times from? The design department proposes a time, and it is passed through some economic filter. To establish whether we can afford to pay that much, or not? But there is no consistency. If a decoration takes too long, either simplify it so it can be made faster, sell it at a higher price or abandon it, because no one will buy, for example, a teapot for five million.

The problems caused by the different vessels painted on piece rates are compounded by the painter’s physical build.

– ...I happen to be short, so when I was filling a large platter, I had to stand up so I would not smear it with my breasts while filling the middle...

To visualise this work, I look at a Tulip bowl from the ZCB range in an online shop; it resembles the old makutry bowls used for grinding dough. The bowl weighs more than two kilograms and is decorated with three-colour stamps: cobalt peacock eyes and their green-and-brown version. The gross price in the online shop is PLN 421.55.

I learn that this is a bowl in decoration 166A, which is very labour-intensive. The painters say it is hardest to paint the inside, because every tiny dot must be placed very precisely in the centre of a green circle. It is priced at PLN 49 gross for piecework painting. During the day, an experienced painter can paint only four pieces. But her shoulder and spine become very stiff in the process. Those four pieces are not enough to earn the minimum wage.

– That is why, as a reward, you go to work on Saturday...

to be continued on 21 August at 5:00 p.m.

Further chapters: “And as a Reward, a Working Saturday”, “Every Worker Has Their Own ‘White’ One”. “Pit Bull, or ‘Drawing Abstract Conclusions Is Unwarranted’”, “In the Labour Court Corridor”, “In the President’s Office, Where History, Politics and Capitalism Rule” and “No One Here Works on Piece Rates”.