Tönnies is still courting Ukraine refugees on the Polish border: "Immoral and undignified"

Created: 04/01/2022 10:17 am

By: Lisa Mayerhofer

According to a report, the meat company Tönnies is recruiting workers on the Polish-Ukrainian border among the refugees.

(Iconic image) © Lino Mirgeler/dpa/Iconic image

According to a report, the meat company Tönnies is recruiting workers on the Polish-Ukrainian border among the refugees.

Associations and politicians are outraged.

Przemyśl - Tönnies is Germany's largest slaughterhouse and is apparently looking for new employees.

No wonder, the group was already criticized during the corona pandemic for its questionable treatment of its employees.

According to a report by ARD

magazine, the meat company is now trying to recruit Ukrainian refugees for its operations.

Ukraine News: Tönnies is courting workers at the border

The magazine has a flyer that Tönnies distributed to the refugees in the Polish border town of Przemyśl.

Helpers at the border, on the other hand, are concerned that the refugees, due to the Ukraine war* and the chaos at the border, will not be able to classify such an attempt at recruitment - the flyer is written in German.

Inge Bultschneider from the interest group "WerkFAIRträger" finds the recruitment attempts "tasteless".

The initiative works to improve the working conditions of migrants in the meat industry.

“Making money off misery and selling it as a good deed is nothing new in the meat industry.

We experienced something similar in 2015 with the refugee wave," Bultschneider told

.

Tönnies defends itself against the criticism: "We help the war refugees on site and offer them future prospects," said company spokesman Fabian Reinkemeier the magazine.

“We do not enrich ourselves from the plight of the refugees.

That's a completely insane statement.

Nor do we disguise anything as a good deed.”

The group also defends itself against the accusation of the refugee helpers that they would not want to take children or the elderly with them.

We have occasionally brought women with children to us because we were able to find family-friendly accommodation for them on the private housing market," emphasizes Reinkemeier to

. 

The meat company now wants to stop recruiting attempts

But there is also criticism from politicians: Filiz Polat, migration expert for the Greens, said: “It is good that companies are open to refugees and offer them work.

But there is something immoral and undignified about holding a work contract in the face of people who are fleeing at the border.”

Reinkemeier told the

that they only wanted to help: "We didn't just want to talk about it, we wanted to do it." The new jobs in the companies were created especially for the refugees from Ukraine.

Now they want to stop recruiting after the concentrated criticism.