With the emergence of the coronavirus, attitudes toward eastern Europeans are changing dramatically: Merkel is already talking about “intimidating news.”

It is possible that, if not for the pandemic, the deplorable living conditions of these labor migrants remain of little concern to anyone.

The exploitation of Eastern Europeans, mainly Romanians, Bulgarians, Poles, in German slaughterhouses, and their intolerable living conditions, have been discussed for many years.

Following a new scandal, responsible politicians promised to change the situation, sent ombudsmen to companies, and in 2017 they even passed a law with the hopeful title “Law to Guarantee the Rights of Workers in the Meat Industry.”

However, after a brief turmoil and for a long time, a “culture of invisibility” re-emerged, as the Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) criticized these days.

The problems of Eastern Europeans working in slaughterhouses did not worry locals either, the Tula still cynically commented that no one forced them to go to Germany to earn more here than in their homeland.

Virologists reassure consumers: Coronavirus is not transmitted through meat

Now, with the appearance of the coronavirus, attitudes are changing. The working conditions of Eastern Europeans also indirectly, through COVID-19 infection statistics, affect the lives of the local population. After all, in early May, the government set a threshold for new coronavirus infections from which quarantine could relax: no more than 50 new infections for every 100,000 inhabitants in a city or district per week. When this limit is exceeded, the district or city will have to revert to its previous limitations.

And here, so to speak, deliberately, new outbreaks of coronavirus have been announced since the second week of May in the concerns of the meat industry in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Schleswig-Holstein and, last Sunday, in Lower Saxony. One hundred or even several hundred workers infected with COVID-19 from Eastern Europe have been identified in various meat establishments.

It is true that most of those infected did not feel any symptoms, while others only felt low, but this does not change the need: cities and districts are forced to reinforce quarantine restrictions again.

The meat industry’s concerns have been subjected to massive testing, and virologists have been quick to assure consumers that the coronavirus is not transmitted by meat.

“Many people work here on the verge of exhaustion”

German slaughterhouses and cutting plants for pork and beef employ some 70,000 people, about half of them Eastern Europeans, through subcontractors and contractors, according to Karin Vladimirow, spokeswoman for the Food, Beverage and Restaurants (NGG).

The work here is “incredibly difficult”: “always cold, always wet, bones and joints suffer,” Andrea Fink-Keßler, president of the Union of Farmer Meat Processing Companies, explained to German radio.

These days, there is a lot of talk in the country’s media about the difficult working and living conditions of Eastern Europeans working in the meat industry. “Many people, especially Bulgarians and Romanians, are working on the brink of exhaustion here,” a Pole who worked for the Tönnies group slaughterhouse told Die Welt.

“Normally I travel on the third night, the shift starts on the fourth. After working at the slaughterhouse for 11 hours, I return home on about the third day and die after getting tired. This is how I work six days a week, the Sunday is free, “said the Pole.

Priest of the Diocese of Münster: “If I had to live like this, I would drink every day”

Most Eastern Europeans rent apartments in groups, often in dilapidated buildings. He also lives in large dormitory-style buildings, say old barracks. The rent for workers is deducted from their salary, 250 euros or more per bed, although living conditions are often deplorable. Suppose there are 10 workers living in a 60-70 square meter apartment in Guetersloh, East Westphalia.

Furthermore, subcontractors also commit fraud when it comes to paying wages or vacations. Eastern Europeans are silent for fear of losing their jobs.

Peter Kossen, a Catholic cleric from the Diocese of Münster who has been fighting for the rights of these workers for many years, drastically calls this behavior by employers and subcontractors slavery, human trafficking. Because instead of receiving the German minimum wage of around € 10 an hour for hard work, they often earn just € 4.50.

According to this socially committed priest, the work was previously done by the locals and he was decently paid for it. And today, the meat industry “hires” men and women who are “exploited, cheated, and humiliated” – “single-use people, not fellow citizens,” Kossen said.

“If I had to live like most of these people, I would drink every day,” says the priest. He recently wrote a letter to the German Minister of Labor Hubertus Hail (SPD) and the Minister of Labor of North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl Josef Laumann (CDU), demanding that the coronavirus crisis take more care of Eastern Europeans who work here.

“The root of evil to be uprooted – subcontractors”

Last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel herself spoke of the “scary news” of the meat industry. “Housing conditions are particularly unsatisfactory,” he said, promising that the government will introduce new rules soon.

“As a society, we can no longer continue to calmly observe the exploitation of people from Central and Eastern Europe,” Federal Labor Minister Heil said on Wednesday. According to him, “it is time to bring order to this industry.”

“The root of the evil that must be uprooted is subcontractors,” said the federal minister. For different tasks in the meat industry, contracts are made with more and more subcontractors, who also have contracts with other subcontractors, some of whom only have one mailbox.

This ultimately results in a real subcontractor scrubber where no one feels directly responsible for employees anymore.

This outsourcing system allows workers to be exploited financially. Big corporations only care about one thing: how to reduce production costs. Officially, they are not responsible for the deplorable working and living conditions of workers in Eastern Europe.

Consumers who want cheap meat are also to blame

The authors of the critical comments did not forget another culprit: a consumer in the country who loved cheap meat. Germans consume 60 kg of meat per person per year. In supermarkets, people often look for the cheapest meat possible, they are happy to buy a 600g package of pork chops for 3.99 euros.

This circumstance was unequivocally mentioned by Ansgar Puff, Bishop of Cologne, who revealed the moral duplicity of society. Everyone is outraged by coronavirus infections in slaughterhouses, but “after all, the truth has only come to light in the daylight we didn’t want to see”: a barbecue party in the garden costs us very little because the Eastern Europeans work as slaves in slaughterhouses.

“We just liked cheap grilled meat too much,” the bishop told consumers.

Robert Habeck, one of the leaders of the Green Party, even demanded the introduction of a minimum price for meat, as a way to curb the price dumping that has occurred in mass meat production.

However, he was soon opposed by Left Party leader Dietmar Bartsch, who reminded him that people with a thin wallet would no longer be able to buy meat.

“I don’t want the schnitzel to lead to social fragmentation,” he said.

Following government decision, meat concerns threaten to leave Germany

On Wednesday, the federal government, as promised, adopted key points in the occupational health and safety program, which anticipates that starting in 2021. January 1 In the meat industry, only workers employed by that company and not by subcontractors will be able to to work.

Concerns about meat reacted immediately and accused the Minister of Labor of succumbing to union incitement. The entire meat industry has been unjustifiably attacked and stigmatized, Heike Harstick, general manager of the Meat Industry Association, told the Funke media group.

According to her, it is impossible to do without contracts in the meat industry: “Because there are no workers in the German craft market, since there are many in the meat industry.”

Harstick said the bans “would force a large part of meat production to be relocated abroad.”

North Rhine-Westphalia Labor Minister K. J. Laumann is calm about such threats. “I don’t think the planned labor protection measures will allow companies to move abroad,” a CDU politician said Thursday. Slaughterhouses are where animals are raised.

After all, Clemens Tönnies, the largest owner of the German pig slaughterhouse company, said in an interview that workers go to pigs, not the other way around.