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Fleisch employees at Tönnies (archive image): Compensation for quarantine
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Tönnies/ DPA
After the corona-related shutdown and quarantine for employees at the meat processor Tönnies in spring 2020, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has to pay compensation in two cases.
That was decided by the administrative court in Minden.
The cases that have now been decided are about subcontractors who have worked with their own employees on the Tönnies site, said a spokeswoman for the court.
Like many of their colleagues, the two employees went into quarantine for several weeks in June and July on the orders of the district.
The reason was a massive outbreak of Covid-19 in the slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, in which numerous employees who worked on the factory premises became infected or had close contact with infected people.
The subcontractors had continued to pay the wages plus social security contributions of around 1,000 euros each, but then reclaimed the money from the state.
4500 similar cases in Minden
The country had refused and accused the company of not having adequately protected employees in the workplace.
Therefore, there is no entitlement to wage compensation under the Infection Protection Act, so the argument goes.
North Rhine-Westphalia's Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) said at the time: "I'm not in the mood for me to transfer anything to Mr. Tönnies or the subcontractors."
The Minden court did not follow this view of the state, but a reason for the judgment is still pending.
The cases of the two employees were the first of their kind to be decided in court.
According to a spokeswoman, there are still more than 4,500 legally similar cases at the Minden Administrative Court.
There are more than 3,000 at the administrative court in Münster.
rai/dpa