'Modern Slavery' At The Heart Of German Slaughterhouse Outbreak

Source: DW

Just as lockdown measures are lifting, more than 200 employees at a slaughterhouse in western Germany have contracted COVID-19. DW spoke to workers living in dilapidated, crowded conditions.

I'm standing outside a run-down, two-story brick building in the village of Rosendahl, in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. One of the residents, a man of around 50, tells me the home has been placed under quarantine "because of coronavirus."

His grasp of English and German is limited, and he wants to remain anonymous, but he tells me he's from the Romanian city of Sibiu. The man doesn't seem to understand that having his house under quarantine requires him to stay inside. He's wearing a paper mask, but it dangles loosely around his neck. The man works at the Westfleisch slaughterhouse in nearby Coesfeld, along with a number of other Romanians, Bulgarians and Polish people.

Authorities have temporarily closed the slaughterhouse after news broke that an unknown number of workers at the site had become infected with the coronavirus. As of Monday afternoon, at least 249 people had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease -- many of them foreign workers...

Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-modern-slavery-at-the-heart-of-german-slaughterhouse-outbreak/a-53396228

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A spokeswoman for the Coesfeld Green party says nobody has taken responsibility for the workers' health and safety conditions. The problem has been "pushed back and forth between the local municipality, the region and the state," with no one willing to act.

She suspects it has to do with the fact that workers are officially employed by a subcontractor, with German public health officials only getting involved once someone has been infected..

A woman who lives across the street from the workers' home tells me that authorities were slow to act and says she feels sorry for the foreigners. "They are poor people, put up in squalid conditions and exploited," she says...

Kossen, a 51-year-old Catholic theologian says "this catastrophe was on the horizon for weeks," adding that many foreign workers live "crammed into moldy dorms and decrepit homes." And, he says, the same applies for the "overcrowded buses that are used to shuttle workers to the slaughterhouse."



- 'End modern slavery' sign held by Patrick Peter Kossen.
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'The Jungle' is a 1906 novel by the American journalist & novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). He wrote the book to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the U.S. in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. His primary purpose was to describe the meat industry and its working conditions.

However, most readers were more concerned with several passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century. This greatly contributed to a public outcry which led to reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

Sinclair famously said of the public reaction, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
The book depicts working-class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle