Meat industry presents the federal government with a 5-point plan
At the weekend, the Association of the Meat Industry (VDF) presented the federal government with a 5-point plan for the nationwide and industry-independent implementation of measures for the employment of contract workers. In letters to Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Federal Ministers Julia Klöckner (Nutrition), Hubertus Heil (Labour) and Jens Spahn (Health), the VDF proposes that the measures from voluntary commitments in the industry, which have been in force since 2014, be introduced as binding and with regard to the accommodation of work to sharpen contract workers.
In view of the increased number of Covid-19 infections in individual meat plants, the meat industry as a whole was recently accused of not having taken suitable corona protection measures in the plants. In addition, the accommodation of the contract workers had been criticized. The association rejects these public and blanket condemnations of the entire industry by individual trade unionists and politicians.
The interim results available so far from the official investigations into the Covid-19 virus in some federal states show that there is no general problem in the industry. According to this, neither insufficient infection protection measures nor the living situation of contract workers were objected to during the controls in the meat plants.
The results available so far for 13.476 of the officially ordered tests for employees of meat plants are 13.336% negative at 99. 140 of the test results known to us were positive for Covid-19, ie 1%. There was an increased occurrence in two of the 27 companies examined, with 33 and 92 positive cases respectively.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, hundreds of apartments in which contract workers from meat companies live have also been checked by occupational safety in the past few days. There were only major complaints in one apartment, and due to fire protection deficiencies, the residents were immediately moved. These results show that the corona infection protection measures implemented in the companies are effective and that there are generally no problems with accommodation.
The VDF sees no reason to question the entire work contract system for a single industry. In the self-commitments of the meat industry from 2014 and 2015, a good framework for employment with work contracts was created, which above all secures living and social standards. These are the "Meat Industry Code of Conduct, July 2014" and the "Location Offensive of German Companies in the Meat Industry - Commitment by Companies to More Attractive Working Conditions of September 21.9.2015, XNUMX".
In a 5-point plan, the meat industry is proposing to the federal government that the core elements of these self-commitments should be legally stipulated nationwide in a uniform and binding manner:
1. Immediate abolition of employment based on the A1 regulation of the Posted Workers Act in the entire meat industry (slaughter, butchering, processing). Justification: Employment without a German regulation on continued wages in the event of illness encourages people to come to work sick and send sick employees back to their home country. All employees should only be employed on the basis of German social security law. This approach should be examined for other sectors.
2. The regulations for the accommodation of contract workers provided for in the code of conduct for the meat industry should be made mandatory for everyone by federal law.
3. The Meat Industry Association is also willing to hold talks with the legislator in order to tighten the details of the voluntarily implemented accommodation rules for contract workers (e.g. with regard to the maximum occupancy of apartments, equipment, etc.).
4. The client's right and obligation to examine the contracting company with regard to compliance with housing standards should be made legally possible and clearly regulated.
5. An equally clear legal requirement should be created for the client's right to audit compliance with the working hours of contract workers. As well as the obligation to do so.
The Association of the Meat Industry is committed to ensuring that there are no longer any individual cases that are publicly attributed to the meat industry as a whole. To this end, he proposed to the federal government that these targeted measures should be stipulated nationwide and that there should not be legal requirements that also affect companies that do not have any deficits in the areas criticized.
