Clemens
Tönnies, sometimes called the "Pork Chop Prince"
Corona in the Slaughterhouse
The High Price of Cheap Meat
German slaughterhouses have been hit recently with
horrifying coronavirus outbreaks, with over 1,000 cases in one facility. The
industry, and its biggest players, share the blame. Change could be coming. By
DER SPIEGEL Staff
26.06.2020,
18.41 Uhr
By Markus
Becker, Jürgen Dahlkamp, Markus Dettmer, Jörg Diehl, Lukas Eberle, Michael
Fröhlingsdorf, Kristina Gnirke, Florian Gontek, Hubert Gude, Claus Hecking,
Julia Amalia Heyer, Nils Klawitter, Gunther Latsch, Catalin Prisacariu, Gerald
Traufetter and Markus Verbeet
The
white-plastered house near Münster in the far west of Germany isn't really a
home at all. It's more of a dormitory, like so many others in this area. It
offers a place to sleep until the next shift begins.
In recent
days, however, it has been transformed into a prison.
The steel
gate leading to the front yard is bolted shut and nobody is allowed to leave.
The Romanians who live here behind gray shutters and barred ground-floor
windows are under quarantine - and they all work for Tönnies, which operates
the largest slaughterhouse in Germany in nearby Rheda-Wiedenbrück.
On Tuesday
of this week, a couple of the men are lying on blankets outside and drinking
beer to stave off the boredom and their worries about what might happen next.
One of them, who says his name is George, says that 15 workers lived in the
house and five became infected. "Three of them were picked up and taken to
different lodgings, two are still here."
All under
one roof? "Yes, we're afraid of getting infected," says George.
"I called the police, and they came and said: We can't help you." So
they have isolated the two positive cases, each in a room. George says he was
last tested four days ago and that he had no idea if he was positive or not
since the results hadn't yet arrived.
When the
men aren't under quarantine and working at full capacity, they and the rest of
the workers at the factory carve up tens of thousands of pigs per day. It is,
in fact, why they came to Germany in the first place. Yet despite being a vital
part of meat production, they are treated like second-class humans. They tend
to be hired by subcontractors, they are poorly paid, quickly replaced and
inadequately protected – even during the current coronavirus pandemic.
George says
that a thermometer has been standing right next to the entrance of the
slaughterhouse for the last several weeks, but there was never anybody there to
operate it. Every morning, they "just walked right on by." It seems
the factory didn't want anything to interrupt operations. It was only two days
before they were placed under quarantine – once it had become clear that
Tönnies was host to the largest coronavirus outbreak since the lockdown in all of
Europe – that the company began taking its employees' temperatures. "By
then, it was already too late," says George.
Now,
Clemens Tönnies – sometimes referred to as the Pork Chop Prince or the Meat
Baron – has a problem. For years, he has ruthlessly pursued efficiency, but
now, the entire country wants to know what goes on behind his factory gates. He
has perfected the art of extracting all he can out of both his employees and
the animals they process, transforming living creatures into an industrial product.
His strategy was volume, volume, volume and he cut his costs to the bone,
becoming the favorite supplier to Germany's discount grocery chains. The
company enjoys a 30 percent share of the pork market in Germany.
Slaughterhouse
workers from Romania
Slaughterhouse
workers from Romania INA FASSBENDER / AFP
His
slaughterhouses, led by the one in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, are the key link in a
production chain in which animals are transformed into cheap meat, a chain that
ends with low-price schnitzel in the freezers of discount grocers Aldi and
Lidl. The company's ability to slash costs along the entire production line has
revolutionized the industry and ensured Tönnies a dominant position in the
market. Even the feet of the pigs, shunned by consumers in Germany, are sold as
a delicacy in China. And the entire system seemed immutable for as long as
consumers were unprepared to pay more for meat and nobody cared about the price
paid by the humans and animals involved - by the farmers, the workers and the
pigs themselves. This, though, is yet another seeming certainty that the
coronavirus has begun to erode.
Time to
Reconsider
The
coronavirus outbreaks in the meat plants – with 1,400 cases in the
Rheda-Wiedenbrück factory alone, combined with lockdowns this week in the
regions surrounding the towns of Guterslöh and Warendorf – is forcing us not
only to address the question as to why the virus is able to spread so quickly
in slaughterhouses. It is also shining the spotlight on the industry as a
whole: What actually goes on in the meatpacking industry? What conditions are
workers forced to endure? And is it worth it for a couple slices of ham on your
breakfast sandwich?
Such
questions have, of course, been raised by previous scandals in the grocery
industry, but were quickly forgotten again. "The Tönnies crisis makes it
clearer than ever that we need to reconsider our approach," says Robert
Habeck, co-leader of Germany's Green Party. And it does seem possible that the
coronavirus pandemic could, in fact, mark the beginning of a change of course.
One indication is the German government's effort to quickly address the
long-known shortcomings with a law banning contract work in the meat industry.
Another is the harsh words politicians have recently found for Clemens Tönnies
and others in the industry.
Labor
Minister Hubertus Heil, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), has
demanded the company pay all the damages associated with the lockdown and noted
in an interview with the website of the tabloid newspaper Bild that Tönnies has
made "an obscene amount of money." Christian Democrat Karl-Josef
Laumann, health minister in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which
Rheda-Wiedenbrück is located, says that voluntary agreements are no longer
enough for the meat industry and that laws will have to be passed. Johannes
Remmel, the Green Party politician who was state agricultural minister in North
Rhine-Westphalia until 2017, even proposed the installation of a
"transition management team" for the slaughterhouse in question. One,
he said, that would ensure that the factory "obeyed the law."
Even the EU
has become involved. Nicolas Schmit, commissioner for jobs and social rights in
the European Commission, issued a threat to Germany and other countries that
guidelines could be passed to guarantee a greater focus on equity in the
industry. He added that proceedings due to a violation of EU contracts may also
be considered. Perhaps even more relevant for Tönnies, however, is that even
Aldi has turned up the pressure. In a letter to its suppliers, the company
insisted on the "adherence to the labor and social standards" that
had been agreed to. It also insisted on "the production of goods in
accordance with human dignity and fair labor practices." The letter went
on to note that even under the type of labor contracts typically employed in
the meat industry, "social standards, including when it comes to worker
lodgings," must be maintained.
Tönnies,
the son of a working-class family who has managed to become a billionaire, also
chairs the supervisory board of the professional football club Schalke 04 and
had German pop star Helene Fischer sing at his birthday party four years ago.
But within just a few weeks, he has turned into a target of hatred and an
archetype of capitalism's ugly side. He has suddenly become the poster boy of
those who have no use for animal welfare, for labor protection laws or for
efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Last
Straw?
His public
apology - without saying what he was apologizing for – and promises of
improvement – without saying how – aren't enough to paper over the situation. A
bit of contrition will likely be too little this time around. Tönnies declined
to give DER SPIEGEL a lengthy interview and no precise answers were provided to
list of questions submitted about the accusations leveled at him and his
company.
The food
industry includes 16 subcategories, with meat being the largest of them,
generating revenues of some 42 billion euros per year in Germany - or 500 euros
per person. On average, people in Germany eat 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of meat
per year – chicken, beef and, especially, pork.
Slaughterhouses
today, though, kill more pigs than Germans can eat, fully 55 million per year –
many more than 20 years ago. Back then, domestic production wasn't enough to
meet demand, but now, Germany sends meat products around the world. Exports
have quadrupled, in part because the huge demand in China. The industry depends
on volume, with the reality being just as unattractive as the words used to
describe it: factory farming, industrial slaughtering, industrial meat
processing.
"Thirty
years ago, traditional butchers could still make a decent profit," says
Thomas Bernhard of Germany's leading food industry labor union. "Since
then, profit margins in the slaughtering industry have been cut
massively." According to his calculations, large slaughterhouses generate
just a few euros in profit per pig. Slaughtering, butchering and processing an
entire animal costs "five to six euros," says Bernhard. Pressure from
grocery chains, he says, is enormous.
Tönnies
Holding, based in Ostwestfalen, is one of the big players in the industry and
is one of the four largest in all of Europe. The others are Westfleisch (based
in Münster), Danish Crown (from Denmark) and Vion Food (from the Netherlands).
None of them slaughter more pigs in Germany than Tönnies, which has experienced
a phenomenal climb in just a few decades.
Clemens
Tönnies' father, named Klemens, ran a butcher shop in the old town of Rheda
back in the 1960s that would go through between seven and 10 animals per week.
His son Clemens, a trained meat technician and businessman, transformed the
family business into an industrial player together with his brother Bernd, who
died back in 1994. His largest factory is right on the A2 autobahn and it can
process up to 30,000 animals each day. Another way of looking at it: Whereas
his father needed an entire week to go through 10 animals, the son requires
less than half a minute.
A
Reunification Boost
It is sold
under different labels depending on the grocery chain and ends up in all manner
of sausage brands. The company has 28 branches around the world and employs a
total of around 16,500 people. In 2019, Tönnies holding brought in revenues of
more than 7 billion euros. According to Forbes, Clemens Tönnies is worth almost
2 billion euros.
Until the
1980s, Clemens and his brother Bernd were not big players in the industry.
Early on, the company was not involved in the actual slaughtering process,
merely carving up and selling the meat. Clemens and Bernd even wielded a knife
themselves in the early years, carving away at a wooden table with a German
shepherd lying nearby. But they were full of ambition. One of their early
takeovers was of a slaughterhouse in Gütersloh, says a state-employed
veterinary who was long in charge of inspecting Tönnies and ensuring hygiene.
Early on, he says, it was 200 to 300 pigs per shift, a volume at which
"inspections were still possible."
Dozens of
German troops arrived in Rheda-Wiedenbrück recently as part of the effort to
prevent the slaughterhouse coronavirus outbreak from spreading. Deeke/
Bundeswehr/ Getty Images
The
company's rapid growth began with reunification, and the brothers were among
the first to expand into former East Germany. In 1990, Bernd Tönnies took
ownership of a formerly state-owned slaughterhouse in Weissenfels near Leipzig.
It was the very first contract completed by the Treuhand, the agency charged
with privatizing formerly state-owned operations in eastern Germany following
reunification. Today, 20,000 animals per day are slaughtered in the facility.
Soon
thereafter, the company began growing in western Germany as well, right along
with the discounters. Today, Tönnies exports meat to 82 countries and operates
facilities in Britain and Denmark. It has 14 feedlots in Russia and plans
currently call for the construction of a slaughterhouse in China together with
a partner. His nephew Robert, Bernd's son, calls his uncle
"megalomaniacal" - the two have been at odds for years.
On his way
to becoming the Pork Chop Prince, Clemens Tönnies crossed paths with a state
politician who has asked that his name not be used. A member of the Green
Party, the politician recalls a trip taken to Rheda-Wiedenbrück as a member of
the state parliament's agricultural committee.
They were
there at the invitation of Tönnies himself, and the future meat magnate told
them exactly how he intended to change the industry. "He clearly said that
his strategy was that of breaking the butcher monopoly and developing a new
channel for selling meat," the politician remembers. The Tönnies strategy
called for selling pre-packed meat out of the self-service cooler in the grocery
store rather than buying meat from a butcher behind the counter, as regulations
called for.
Tönnies'
calculation was that eliminating the counter and the butcher behind it would
result in cheaper meat and greater turnover. On that day, according to the
Green Party politician, he said that not many butchers would survive. "It
was essentially a declaration of open season on your local butcher."
Looking for
a Big Player
Bernd had
been the one to identify the market niche, but it was Clemens – the younger
brother until Bernd's death – who would go on to develop it into a billion-euro
business. "He clearly recognized that chains like Lidl or Aldi were not
interested in negotiating with three different butchers, but wanted a central
supplier that could supply them across half, or even all, of the country,"
the Green Party politician says.
Tönnies
understood that the big players in the grocery industry were looking for a big
player in the meat industry and that meat coolers in grocery stores were his
ticket to massive growth. "With his market share, he determines the pace,
so that an increasing number of small and mid-sized operations can't keep
up," says the head of a comparatively small supplier in Westfalen.
With an
education in business and meat technology, Clemens Tönnies has worked his way
up to billionaire status. He and his wife Margit celebrated his 60th birthday
with a huge bash that included an appearance by Helene Fischer. ANDYKNOTH /
BABIRADPICTURE
Tönnies'
contemporaries say that he only goes just as far as regulations permit,
violating no rules, but taking advantage of them to the degree possible. He has
regularly reduced the effectiveness of efforts to improve conditions for both
animals and workers because honoring them would eat into profits. Tönnies,
though, doesn't simply refuse to comply, says a man who has participated in
such discussions. He simply demands so many ecologically sustainable feedlot
slots - several thousand of them, paid for by others, of course – that his
needs are impossible to meet. According to company figures, only 2 percent of
the meat produced by Tönnies facilities comes from animals that are held in
conditions that are better than the absolute minimum required.
And that is
how the company treats its many employees as well.
Most of the
around 16,500 Tönnies employees work in Germany, which could be viewed as a
positive. But under what conditions are they forced to live?
During a
Tuesday noontime visit to the Tönnies slaughterhouse in the Lower Saxony town
of Badbergen, men and women wearing worn white overalls, masks and red hairnets
were standing on the street outside. It is a vast compound, and Tönnies is
currently building the most state-of-the-art cattle slaughtering and packing
facility in all of Europe at the site. It is an 85-million-euro investment and
designed to handle 900 animals per day.
One young
woman had a square, plastic bucket with her of the kind used for mopping.
"They are for the food and few private articles that we are allowed to
take inside for our shift – for reasons of hygiene," says one worker, a
native of Bucharest named Jean Radu. Neighbors have come up with their own term
for the workers: The bucket people.
Radu and
his co-workers kill up to 500 cows per day using a stunbolt gun. He says he has
nothing bad to say. Those young Romanians who come to Germany for just a couple
of months to make a bit of money do have a hard time, he allows. But he is
doing well, saying he has been in Germany for 12 years and earns decent wages.
He lives in his own apartment together with his wife and two children.
Speechless
A Polish
worker in Rheda-Wiedenbrück has a bit more to say, though he is fearful of
speaking openly. He says he earns 1,600 euros for 190 hours of work per month.
His shifts begin at 3 a.m. and end at 1 p.m., with a 30-minute break every
three hours. "We stand at the conveyor belt about 20 to 30 centimeters
apart, right next to each other. Often, the speed of the belt is ratcheted up
and the supervisor watches us closely." But what else can he do? "My
daughter is sick, and I went into debt for her."
One woman
from Poland, for example, could no longer work because she was pregnant. As a
result, says Brüggenjürgen, she not only had to pay twice the rent, because she
was spending more time in her accommodations, but she had to continue paying a
lump-sum shoe fee of 22 euros for work shoes that she was no longer using.
Like the
Romanians in the white-plastered house near Münster, many workers aren't
actually Tönnies employees, instead working for subcontractors, and without
them, operations at the slaughterhouses would collapse. Tönnies, of course,
didn't invent the system, but the company has perfected it. According to
Tönnies Holding, 50 percent of its workers are actually employees of such a
company.
"We
don't recruit people," says a self-confident Dumitru Miculescu,
"people come to us." With 1,700 employees, Miculescu is likely the
largest Tönnies subcontractor. Back home in Romania, he is called "King of
the Pigs." He insists that everything at his company is legit, saying:
"We pay taxes to the German state and we pay social-security
contributions." He also says that all workers currently under quarantine
are receiving their wages. But Miculescu also admits that some of his workers
who had contact with positive cases actually traveled back home to Romania,
even though they were supposed to have remained under quarantine in Germany.
Josef
Besselmann is another important Tönnies subcontractor. His company has
specialized in cleaning slaughterhouses for the last 25 years and he also
supplies contract workers on the side. Last year, he took in revenues of almost
170 million euros. One video shows him standing in front of his gigantic villa,
which looks as though several houses were shoved together, creating a forest of
gables. If you mute the sound, he looks almost exactly like a Russian oligarch
in his T-shirt and blazer. Besselmann offers Romanian workers a full-service
deal: He brings them to Germany; he puts them up in old houses, apartments or
group hostels; and he apparently also helps out when they have to quickly
disappear again.
Sick and
Feverish
On
Wednesday, June 17, the district announced it would temporarily close the
slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. It only took two hours before two vehicles
from the company Besselmann Services drove up to Thaddäus Strasse 49 in nearby
Verl-Sürenheide, a VW Golf and a VW van pulling a trailer.
Several men
dragged three refrigerators, six beds and number of blue plastic garbage bags
from an attic apartment that Besselmann had rented to a sausage factory. They
then got back in the van and drove away.
Workers and
their families are not allowed to leave their apartments, such as here in Verl.
Some workers from Romania and Bulgaria traveled back home despite the
quarantine. MARTIN MEISSNER / AP
For months,
the owners of the four-unit building had been resisting the idea of allowing
people to live in the attic room, which had been declared a commercial space.
But suddenly, things started moving quickly. One of the six Romanians looked
sick and feverish. A neighbor wrote a message to Verl’s mayor that same night.
"Are these people to be sent home quickly in order to prevent a possible
continued payment of wages?” she wrote.
Her suspicion
didn’t come out of nowhere. She and other residents in the building had learned
that the Romanians and Bulgarians had to pay Besselmann 350 euros per person
per month in rent, meaning the company received 2,100 euros for an apartment
for an apartment that neighbors felt was hardly worth 500 euros. The Romanians
had also told people that if they fell ill, they had to pay a "processing
fee” of 10 euros a day. They also had to pay 100 euros per month for the
"transport service” to their workplace.
When contacted
for comment, Besselmann denied all allegations. The company asked "for
understanding that, in the current situation, we first have to ensure that our
employees who are under quarantine are provided with care and food.” Besselmann
said he didn’t have time at the moment to answer questions. "However, we
will be happy to do so at a later date and would love to invite you to come
here so you can see things for yourself,” he said.
The next
Besselmann transport from Romania to Germany is posted on a Facebook page in
Romanian. "The transport will leave Romania on June 25, 2020, and pick
people up along the following route: Galati - Braila - Buzau - Bucharest -
Brasov - Sibiu - Deva - Arad." The cost of the trip will be deducted from
your first month’s wages.” The most recent entry on the page states that the
trip had been delayed by two days.
More on
This Issue
Coronavirus
Heaven: Why Meatpacking Plants Are Superspreaders By Philip Bethge
Why
Meatpacking Plants Are Superspreaders
The minimum
wage for workers in Germany is 9.35 euros per hour. It doesn't allow for extra
pay for weekend or holiday work, but additional compensation must be paid for
night shifts. That is the law, and it would be unfair to expect slaughterhouses
to pay more, even if the work is extremely strenuous.
The
question is, though, whether subcontractors actually pay what they are supposed
to pay, or whether they pay less than the minimum wage through the "usage
fee” for accommodations, which can sometimes amount to several hundred euros,
or through wage deductions for mistakes made, delays or consumption of alcohol.
Or by not being very particular about keeping track of overtime work.
"Employees
aren’t allowed to take watches or mobile phones with them into the plant for
reasons of hygiene, and there are few clocks in the halls,” says Caritas board
member Brüggenjürgen. "Tönnies has resisted the digital time sheet for
years.” NRW Health Minister Laumann
sneers: "Tönnies can tell you which pig the sausage is from, but it is
unable to keep track of workers' hours digitally."
Decades of
Criticism
The
difficult conditions faced by slaughterhouse workers has been well-known for
some time, with Tönnies having faced criticism from trade unions and animal
welfare activists for years, even decades. Now, though, he is even coming under
attack from schoolchildren.
The Tönnies
empire is located on the northern end of Rheda-Wiedenbrück, on a main traffic
artery. A few balloons and an orange poster have been attached to a road sign
next to the entrance. "Mr. Tönnies, give each of us a tablet computer so
we can do the homeschooling you have brought upon us. The elementary
schoolchildren of Harsewinkel.”
A small
fountain splashes in front of the company headquarters and black sedans are
parked in the parking lot. A restaurant is located across from it as well as a
Tönnies factory outlet, a small supermarket that is currently closed. "The
best quality at low prices,” is written in red letters above the refrigerated
shelves.
The area in
which the animals are butchered comprises only about 10 percent of the large
property. This is where the virus is believed to have spread, at least
according to the analysis of Martin Exner, the director of the Institute for
Hygiene and Public Health at the University of Bonn.
The
district administration tasked Exner with tracking the origins of the outbreak,
and he spent two days at the slaughterhouse together with his team of
researchers. Their testing revealed a problem with the ventilation system.
Aerosols were kept in motion by the circulation of the air in the area where
the animals were butchered, and many workers were likely infected with the
virus as a result, Exner explained at a press conference.
A Second
Lockdown
Since
Tuesday, residents of the Gütersloh region have been experiencing a bit of
déjà-vu, with the state government having reimposed restrictions on public
life. The stricter rules have also been imposed on the neighboring district of
Warendorf following the coronavirus outbreak at Tönnies. A maximum of two
people from different households are allowed to meet; museums and indoor public
swimming pools have closed; and, worse yet, all schools and daycare centers,
which had only recently reopened, were ordered closed again. More than 600,000
people have been affected by the second lockdown.
A line of
people in Gütersloh waiting to be tested SEAN GALLUP / GETTY IMAGES
Anyone who
is ill must go to one of three treatment centers that are now in place in the
Gütersloh district. The administration has also set up a coronavirus testing
center at a vocational college, where anyone with symptoms can go for a test.
On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of people came and waited for hours in the
blazing sun until swabs could be taken - families with children who hadn’t yet
cancelled their vacation plans and needed a negative test to be allowed to
travel. Or those who can’t work from home and who didn't want to infect their
co-workers.
Sven-Georg
Adenauer, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has
been the district administrator in Gütersloh for more than 20 years. On his
windowsill is a framed photograph of his grandfather: the former German
Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
Last week,
the district administrator ordered the suspension of production at the Tönnies
plant. He’s now in charge of managing the chaos, and he’s not afraid to admit
that the task is "totally overwhelming administrative structures and
people.” The day before, he had been forced to send the head of his crisis team
home. He was suffering from too much stress and exhaustion.
At that
moment, his spokesman enters the office with some more bad news: So many people
rushed over to the testing center at the vocational college that doctors there
decided to stop administering tests. Fine, Adenauer answers, we will just have
to open more testing centers.
Each
morning, the district administrator is informed about the number of infected
people in his district who don’t work in the meat industry. Adenauer says there
are currently about 30 cases that don’t have anything to do with Tönnies.
That’s "really nothing,” he says. What worries him, though, is the danger
posed by Tönnies workers who don’t comply with the quarantine rules.
Adenauer is
currently deploying mobile teams, employees with the public order office and
interpretors to maintain contact with the Tönnies people who are required to
quarantine in their homes. The district administrator says that his teams
failed to locate 18 percent of those workers on one recent day – almost one out
of five.
“I suspect
it all grew too big for him. The times of 'bigger and bigger' and 'more and
more' in the meat industry are probably over.”
District
Administrator Sven-Georg Adenauer
Could it be
due to errors in the address lists? Or did the workers perhaps travel back to
their home country? That’s what Rumen Z., his wife Maria and her father Krastio
A. did. The Bulgarian family from the small town of Beliza in the country’s
southwest made their way back home from Rheda-Wiedenbrück a few days ago,
despite the quarantine. They didn’t want to stay in Germany out of fear of the
coronavirus. So, they arranged to be picked up by a neighbor from Beliza, and
invited three more Bulgarians to come along. That’s what Rumen Z. and Krastio
A. told a Bulgarian television station. The city’s mayor, Radoslav Revanski,
confirmed the story to DER SPIEGEL.
Tönnies
employees from Rheda-Wiedenbrück were also found on the Hungarian-Romanian
border. Between Sunday and Tuesday, officials stopped a total of 15 people who
had fled from their quarantine quarters in private vehicles. The head of the
Arad Country public health department confirmed the reports from the Romanian
border police. The workers weren’t tested immediately, instead being sent home
to quarantine.
"It’s
Unacceptable”
District
Administrator Adenauer says he is "deeply disappointed” by Clemens
Tönnies. "I suspect it all grew too big for him. The times of 'bigger and
bigger' and 'more and more' in the meat industry are probably over.”
The
district administrator leans forward in his chair. "Twenty-four,” he says,
grimacing. That’s the number of subcontractors Tönnies works with in
Rheda-Wiedenbrück. Adenauer describes them as "swamp companies.” He talks
about the bosses of these companies and their SUVs. It’s also no secret that
motorcycle gangs and other shady players have been doing the dirty work for the
meat industry for years. "It’s unacceptable,” says Adenauer. There is
anger in his voice, which begs the question: Are these problems really all that
new to him? Is he truly that naive?
Following
an outbreak of corona at the Westfleisch meat processing plant in Coesfeld at
the beginning of May, the district of Gütersloh had 6,600 Tönnies workers
tested, resulting in seven positive cases. Adenauer recalls a telephone call
with Tönnies in which the businessman told him: "We've done our homework,
we can do this."
"Only
seven positive cases, I was relying on the numbers," says the district
administrator. Which is to say: Hindsight is always 20-20. But perhaps he could
have seen things even sooner if he hadn’t been as close to Tönnies. Sources in
Gütersloh say that there are connections in the area that may have contributed
to the lax approach to hygiene rules and which could now make it difficult to
figure out exaclty what happened.
Adenauer
recently started his own small company selling pickles that are brined using an
old Swedish recipe. A few days ago, the jars appeared in an advertisement from
Tönnie’s company promoting a contest.
Clemens
Tönnies’ wife had asked if she could sell the pickles at the company’s factory
outlet. He says he wasn’t aware of the fact they had been used in an
advertisement. "I realize this looks bad," says Adenauer. "No
money has been paid, there is no contract." He says he only gave Mrs.
Tönnies "about 15 jars” around "a month and a half ago.” Adenauer
says he has since requested that the jars be taken off the store’s shelves.
Will
Politicians Take Action?
The
district administrator knows that he has been under a close watch since then
and that his integrity is in danger. "The Tönnies company is going to have
to rebuild trust,” he says. "It will only be when we can be 100-percent
certain that there is no longer a danger to the population from the operation
that we can consider reopening the plant.” It sounds as though he is determined
not to be taken in again.
As were,
for quite some time, politicians in the state capital of Düsseldorf and their
counterparts at the federal level. Without the shock unleashed by the pandemic,
few would have dared to question the contractual conditions under which meat
industry workers labor. German Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, of the center-left
Social Democratic Party (SPD), tried to take action sooner, but the economic
wing of the conservative Christian Democrats (their senior partner in the
government coalition) and with parliamentary group leader Ralph Brinkhaus at
its helm were against it.
The CDU has
always been concerned that if meat industry practices were addressed, changes
would also have to be made elsewhere. Rheda-Wiedenbrück also happens to be
located within Brinkhaus’ constituency.
But Tönnies
has always been smart enough not to rely solely on a CDU network. His deceased
brother Bernd Tönnies was said to have had close ties to Klaus Matthiesen, who
used to be agriculture minister for the state of NRW. When he was Germany’s
economics minister, Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD also visited the Tönnies plant.
That visit came just as a debate about cheap labor from abroad had been
rekindled, with the media writing about "forest people” who were
prostituting themselves for work and spending the night in tents. Tönnies was
able to convince Gabriel that voluntary pledges were sufficient for the meat
industry.
Inhumane
and Epidemiologically Risky
But that
could change now as a result of the coronavirus. In a recent session of
parliament, Labor Minister Heil announced that the outbreak would have
consequences. A few days later, Merkel’s special cabinet for addressing the
coronavirus crisis decided he should come up with draft legislation. The labor
minister said that current practices led to inhumane treatment of contract
workers and represented a significant epidemiological risk.
One of the
subcontractors’ tricks is labeling Romanians or Bulgarians destined for slaughterhouses
as seasonal workers.
Heil plans
to submit his draft legislation to Merkel’s cabinet before the end of July. The
legislation could then be presented to parliament for a vote later this year
after it returns from its summer break.
If passed,
it would mean that only actual staff employees could butcher and process the
meat. As it stands now, that legislation would not be justified on the basis of
occupational health, but rather under trade law. Staff working in Heil’s
ministry believe that would be the best way for ensuring that the legislation
could hold up in German and European courts.
Labor
Minister Heil also intends to put an end to the crammed conditions in the
accommodations and is planning to introduce minimum standards for "mobile
workers.” In addition, employers like Tönnies would no longer be able to make
excuses about not knowing who works for them or where those people live.
This part
of legislation would apply not only to plant and factory workers, but also to
seasonal workers. It would apply to slaughterhouses, to shipyards and to
agricultural operations that rely on imported temporary workers. Germany’s
agriculture minister is still opposed to that plan, arguing that the situation
with seasonal workers is different. But one of the subcontractors’ tricks is
labeling Romanians or Bulgarians destined for slaughterhouses as seasonal
workers.
It is
expected that the Christian Democrats will go along with the legislation.
Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier of the CDU is also tired of having to
play down the dirty methods used by factory butchers. "Contract work is a
necessary and appropriate instrument when, for example, a company receives a
large order and needs short-term reinforcements,” he says. "But it should
not be the rule as it is in the meat industry.”
Even
Klöckner says, "Delegating responsibility to subcontractors is a root
evil." She is also particularly annoyed by the fact that Germans are all
for animal welfare and good working conditions in polls, but nobody wants to
pay for it. Germany also stands alone in a European Union comparison when it
comes to its consumer behavior: No other country in the EU experiences
meat-price dumping to the same degree.
But the
change hasn't come yet. On Thursday, a local branch of the Lidl discount
supermarket in Rheda-Wiedenbrück had pork belly from a label supplied by
Tönnies on sale on Thursday for 4.90 euros a kilo instead of 4.99. Meanwhile,
competitor discount supermarket Aldi was offering chicken legs from "Meine
Metzgerei,” also a brand for its Tönnies-produced products, for 2.72 euros a
kilogram.
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