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The raid has lasted more than 10 hours, but investigators were still on duty that Wednesday afternoon. Since early morning, more than 800 federal police officers have searched the offices of ominous personnel service providers, the private apartments of business owners, and the lodgings where temporary workers apparently illegally smuggled live.
It is a day of great struggles. On behalf of the Naumburg prosecutor’s office, the police felt 72 residential and business premises until the afternoon: in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, in Berlin and Saxony, and several times in Weißenfels, Saxony-Anhalt. A hotspot for the German meat industry. He has confiscated notebooks, smartphones and business documents. And I met people who have to stay six people in apartments with two or three bedrooms. In the middle of the pandemic.
The federal police prepared this raid for months, in order to penetrate deep into the “swamp”, as one investigator calls the alleged smuggling ring. Since the beginning of the year, investigators have been investigating, under Soko’s direction, the Federal Police Inspectorate for Combating Crime in Halle against a construct made up of various temporary work agencies. They are said to have systematically brought people from Belarus, Ukraine, Kosovo and Georgia to Germany using forged papers or as so-called fake students, to be hired at local slaughterhouses. Researchers put the revenue from the illegal business model at 1.5 million euros.
According to information from SPIEGEL, German market leader Tönnies has also deployed staff from at least one of these temporary work agencies at its Weißenfels plant: possibly without knowing the illegal origin of these workers.
The meat industry is making negative headlines again: after new corona infections in slaughterhouses across Germany and the closure in the Gütersloh district after the massive outbreak in Tönnies. The incidents revealed the precarious existence of thousands of contractors in Eastern Europe who slaughter, dismantle and load animals in monotonous movements and who, too often, have to live together in a confined space after their work is finished.
Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) wants to largely ban employment contracts and loans in the meat industry starting next year. His bill is in the Bundestag; Lobbyists in the meat industry are trying to soften it, at least when it comes to temporary work.
But Wednesday’s big raid shows how dubious the structures are when it comes to recruiting and employing low-wage workers.
Top ten suspects
“Our measures are not directed against the meat processing industry,” says a spokesman for the Federal Police, “but against people behind the scenes who have brought people to Germany illegally.” The investigations began at the beginning of the year after the police repeatedly discovered travelers with false documents during checks at border crossings and train stations, and there were increasing indications of illegal use in the meat industry.
Now there are ten main suspects, they are between 41 and 56 years old, two of them women. At the center of the research are two personnel service providers: the German-Polish company IRC and, above all, Berkana GmbH based in Twist, Lower Saxony. Their business premises were searched early in the morning. Berkana GmbH was founded in 2017, the sole shareholder is a businessman from Garbsen, near Hannover. According to the business register, the managing director lives in Weißenfels, where police examined at least four dozen commercial and residential premises on Wednesday. “We work according to the motto ‘Justice is a win for both parties,'” Berkana once promised in an ad aimed at customers in the meat industry. “Complying with the meat industry code of conduct and applicable laws is routine for us.”
“A small service provider of ours at the Weißenfels location”
From Weißenfels, Berkana apparently placed temporary workers in various meat processing companies in Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, including the local factory in Tönnies, as SPIEGEL learned from the researchers. A Tönnies spokesperson confirmed on request: “The company you mentioned is a small service provider of ours at the Weißenfels location.” If authorities need information on certain business partners, they will be given “the necessary information,” the spokesman said. Tönnies promises to employ 5,000 people directly at the company in November.
The fact that agents had to hire their temporary workers outside the EU is a result of the conditions in the slaughterhouses, says Szabolcs Sepsi from the German Trade Union Confederation Fair Mobility Advisory Center. “The fluctuation is high and the system constantly needs supplies. But now you can’t even find people in Romanians who want to work under these conditions.”
The service providers are accused of being smuggled as a gang and for commercial purposes, as well as falsifying documents. The presumption of innocence applies until a final conviction. The owner of Berkana and the managing director were not available to SPIEGEL until now. IRC Czuprynscy stated in Poland that it was impossible for the company to send people to Germany with false documents.
Lobbying for temporary work
For the Minister of Labor, Heil, the raid is confirmation that “we are on the right track with our law.” In some parts of the meat industry, “criminal exploitation of employees unfortunately continues to be the order of the day.” Therefore, the planned changes “should not be diluted by the loud roars of the lobby.”
On October 5, the Bundestag hearing will take place on the planned ban on employment contracts and temporary work in the meat industry. Industry representatives recently lobbied for exemptions for contract workers. They claim that these are a must have for the barbecue season.
Employee representatives refer to this argument as advanced. “It is always said that temporary workers are needed to increase production in the season,” says Thomas Bernhard, head of the meat division at the Union of Restaurants and Foodies (NGG). “But in other sectors, like the confectionery industry, it can be done without temporary workers, but with flexible working time accounts.” Therefore, the Heils project must be “decided without compromise”. And fast.
