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Cold store of the meat company Tönnies (2017)
Photo: Bernd Thissen / DPA
So much agreement was seldom: after the corona outbreaks in the meat industry and the pictures of the often pitifully cramped accommodations of the Eastern European workers, the grand coalition announced in the summer that it would clean up the industry.
Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) initiated an occupational health and safety control law that is intended to force large companies to employ employees directly instead of employing them via work contracts or temporary employment agencies.
You have to "dry out" the swamp in the meat industry, said Heil at the time.
His North Rhine-Westphalian official colleague Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) assisted: In structures without transparency, such as in the meat industry, there can be no trust.
But now, a few months later, the unity is crumbling: The law that was supposed to be passed in the Bundestag this Thursday was unceremoniously removed from the agenda.
There is still a need for discussion, it says from the Union parliamentary group.
The CDU and CSU are being worked on by industry, the SPD says, on the other hand, and the Union puts lobbying interests above the working conditions of employees.
One name that comes up is that of Max Straubinger (CSU), member of the Labor and Social Committee.
Yes, says Straubinger, he was contacted and also looked at slaughterhouses - but only to find out more.
"Companies need flexibility," says Straubinger.
Seasonal peaks can only be absorbed through contracts for work or temporary work: "We ensure that this flexibility is maintained."
According to estimates by trade unions, around 30,000 contract employees and a good 5,000 temporary workers are currently working in the industry.
"Knitted with a hot needle"
What the Bavarian Straubinger is now saying doesn't sound like a tidying up, nor does it correspond to the cornerstones that the cabinet had agreed on: work contracts and temporary work should no longer be possible in the core areas of the meat industry.
These cornerstones, replied Straubinger, were "knitted with a hot needle", "with the highest level of emotionality and excitement".
He sees things more soberly: He is also responsible for overall responsibility for the respective meat company, but in peripheral areas such as packaging or at seasonal peaks you should be able to use contractors or temporary workers who are certified according to labor and health standards.
He also considers the law's differentiation from handicraft businesses with fewer than 50 employees to be "too clumsy", which discriminates against the large businesses, which are often doing better than claimed.
If one follows Straubinger, the ban on contract work and agency work seems to be overturned.
However, two current studies on the meat sector cast doubts on Straubinger's image of the industry.
One comes from the Food and Pleasure Gaststätten Union (NGG).
She takes the figures on temporary work requirements in meat companies, which were apparently launched by the meat and temporary work industry and were also circulating in the CDU parliamentary group.
"The work contracts have probably already been written off, but the temporary work as the pretty sister of the ugly work contracts should be saved at all costs," says Johannes Specht, head of the NGG collective bargaining department.
In fact, temporary workers have more rights on paper than contractors and are more or less integrated into the company.
Since 2017, general contractors like Tönnies have also had to ensure that their subcontractors work properly, but there is still no direct responsibility.
"The temporary employment agencies are responsible, which often also offer work contracts and have made a business model of undermining employee rights wherever possible," says Specht.
The statistics launched by the lobby, which suggest an enormous additional need for staff in the barbecue season, are "highly manipulative".
If you take the weakest month as the basis for calculation, the demand at peak times naturally appears enormous, according to Specht.
On the other hand, assuming the annual mean, the additional requirement would shrink to a maximum of ten percent in the barbecue season.
"That can easily be balanced out with flexible work accounts."
The meat companies did not use work contracts and temporary work to absorb production peaks, but "to reduce costs with this staff mix".
Low-wage Germany
A second study shows how exemplary this succeeded in this country.
It comes from the Economic and Social Science Institute of the union-related Hans Böckler Foundation and illustrates how Germany became a low-wage country after the EU's eastward expansion.
"In contrast to most of the neighboring countries in western and northern Europe, there are hardly any tariff structures in the German meat industry," says political scientist and study author Thorsten Schulten.
While generally binding collective agreements apply in Belgium, France and the Netherlands, most of the large German companies operated largely without collective agreements.
The only exception is the Westfleisch cooperative.
This development also has an impact on labor costs per employee, which, according to the study, are so cheap in Germany at just under 32,000 euros per year that Belgium has already intervened with the EU Commission in Brussels because of unfair competition.
The comparison with Denmark is particularly extreme, where the workers are traditionally highly organized, including the Eastern Europeans who work there: Here, the labor costs in the industry at 69,000 euros are twice as high as in Germany.
"As a result of these cheap structures, Germany has changed from a net importer to a powerful meat exporter who is destroying structures that have grown elsewhere," said Schulten.
More than four million tons of meat were exported in 2019, mostly to the EU, but also to China.
The export share of the largest German meat company Tönnies is now even 50 percent of the meat volume.
Despite a voluntary commitment by the industry to increase the permanent workforce and reduce the number of contract workers, trade unions assume that 90 percent of contract workers are now employed in some companies.
The improvements in working conditions promised in the past also seem to have been more of a PR measure: after key controls by the occupational safety administration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia between July and September 2019, almost 9,000 legal violations were registered in 120 slaughterhouses and service contractors.
Most of the time, according to Schulten, these were inappropriate wage deductions, for example for personal protective equipment or some alleged misconduct: "This is de facto bypassing the minimum wage."
And the planned occupational health and safety law?
Federal Labor Minister Heil warns against succumbing to the attempts of lobbyists and "to formulate loopholes in the law".
Just a few weeks ago, 800 police officers searched temporary employment agencies in the meat industry nationwide and found: "The grievances are real and continue."
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