Icon: enlarge
Employees in the sausage factory (symbol photo): "Thousands have been infected with corona in and around slaughterhouses"
Photo: Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images
After the Corona outbreaks in the German meat industry, the grand coalition is actually in agreement: Working conditions in the industry must improve.
And yet the dispute on the subject within the federal government is coming to a head.
With the result that the introduction of stricter rules could be a long time coming.
The corresponding occupational health and safety control law, which the coalition actually wanted to pass next week, disappeared from the agenda on Friday.
There is still a need for discussion, it said from the Union faction.
The SPD is angry.
Your parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich accuses the Union of blocking in favor of lobby interests.
"If the CDU and CSU refuse to continue, they put the profit of the meat lobby over the working conditions of the employees and over the agreements in the coalition," said Mützenich to the editorial network in Germany.
He criticized the attitude of the Union.
"Thousands of people have been infected with Corona in and around slaughterhouses."
The victims are those affected, their families, their colleagues, but also entire regions.
Therefore, the draft law by Labor Minister Hubertus Heil should be implemented quickly.
What the bill provides
The SPD politician had already warned at the end of September that the planned law against exploitation in the meat industry would be watered down.
"In parts of the meat industry, the criminal exploitation of employees is unfortunately still the order of the day," Heil had said.
In five federal states officials had previously searched residential and business premises in connection with the illegal smuggling of workers for meat plants.
more on the subject
Federal Minister of Labor: Heil calls the meat industry's tariff offer "diversionary maneuver"
Large-scale raid on suspicion of illegal employment: Federal police searched meat plants
Due to the often poor working and living conditions, according to the draft law, contracts for work and services should be banned from January 1, and temporary work from April 1, 2021.
The law was introduced after massive corona infections in slaughterhouses and cutting plants.
Butchers' businesses with up to 49 employees are to be excluded.
The meat industry association had criticized that the law made certain wage slaughter or branded meat programs, cooperation between companies and joint ventures impossible.
On the Bundestag website, the final deliberations on the law on Friday afternoon were announced for next Thursday - as were the final committee deliberations on Wednesday.
Then the point disappeared there.
"The meat lobby can celebrate a first important victory against the Groko," said Beate Müller-Gemmeke, the labor market expert of the Green parliamentary group.
It is obvious that "the government coalition is once again about to buckle before the interests of the meat industry".
Black and Red have loudly announced that they will clean up this industry.
"You should do that now."
The opaque network of work contracts and temporary work and the systematic exploitation in the meat industry must come to an end.
"It is clear that parts of the Union want to block and dilute the draft law," said the deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group, Katja Mast.
It is high time that the irresponsibility of the meat industry came to an end. "The industry takes advantage of every little loophole to evade its responsibility." The law must be put in place today rather than tomorrow. "Mast says that the law should come into force on January 1, 2021.
Icon: The mirror
jus / dpa
