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After corona infections have accumulated in several slaughterhouses, the German government awaits legal consequences. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) announced in the Bundestag on Wednesday that the Crown cabinet would adopt stricter regulations next Monday. Merkel spoke of “terrifying news” from the meat industry, referring to the often precarious working and living conditions of employees. Heil promised, “We will clean up under these conditions.”
Crown infections were found in large numbers of employees at various slaughterhouses, for example at Coesfeld in Westphalia and Bad Bramstedt in Schleswig-Holstein. Working conditions in industry have become a focus of attention, as has the often overcrowded collective accommodation of the many temporary workers in Eastern Europe.
The North Rhine-Westphalia Minister of Health Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) admitted years of failure between parties in the event of abuses in the slaughterhouses. No one who has been a labor and social politician for a long time can “pretend that we do not know that we often face precarious conditions in the employment and accommodation situation of Eastern European contract workers in the meat industry,” he said on Wednesday. Laumann. In Dusseldorf
Clemens Tönnies, managing partner at Germany’s largest slaughterhouse, Tönnies, contradicted a general suspicion against the meat industry in the crown pandemic. “I very much understand Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann. He is currently under a lot of pressure,” he said in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. “But his criticism should not become a hobby.”
However, no cases of corona have been discovered in Germany’s largest meat processor, Tönnies, in Rheda-Wiedenbrück (North Rhine-Westphalia). By Wednesday noon, 784 laboratory findings were available. “All of these findings were negative,” said the Gütersloh district. North Rhine-Westphalia had previously ordered that all slaughterhouse workers be screened for possible Covid disease 19.
The Lower Saxony state government now also wants to control all slaughterhouse employees in the state. Social Affairs Minister Carola Reimann (SPD) announced in the Hanover state parliament that it would involve 23,700 employees at 183 meat-processing companies.
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Heil sees “the root of all evil” in subcontractors
Meanwhile, the Federal Minister of Labor, Heil, is concerned about the working conditions and accommodation of the mostly foreign employees: “As a society, we should not continue to observe how people from Central and Eastern Europe are exploited in this society”. Outsourcing in the meat industry is the “root of the economy”. Wrong “.
Therefore, Heil campaigned to think fundamentally about the currently widespread employment contract constructions. In addition, the minister campaigned for mandatory control rates nationwide. Many federal states had saved too much on the responsible authorities to verify compliance with existing occupational safety regulations.
In a current hour in the Bundestag, opposing positions collided. Jutta Krellmann on the left called for, among other things, a ban on employment contracts, clear rules for accommodation and a uniform minimum wage across the industry. Green MP Friedrich Ostendorff campaigned for the closure of companies as long as minimum authorizations and individual accommodation of workers are not guaranteed.
AfD Group spokesperson for agricultural policy, Stephan Protschka, warned, however, that additional bans and conditions could cause slaughterhouses to move abroad. FDP MP Carlo Cronenberg also relies on tighter controls rather than new laws: “We have no legislative problem, we have a law enforcement problem.” (dpa)
