‘We have to fight for these conditions’: why Danish meat plant workers are Europe’s best paid | Meat industry

In meat crops, there’s a golden rule: the manufacturing line by no means stops. For 28 years, Frank Vestergaard has labored in Denmark’s meat processing trade. When he began, he says, staff had been anticipated to slaughter 80 pigs an hour on the road; as we speak, that quantity has rocketed to 432 animals.

He begins work at 6am and offers with animal carcasses. The pigs are first put to sleep with gasoline, then the employees slit their throats to let the blood drain out. Vestergaard’s job is to take away any accidents from the carcasses, reminiscent of damaged bones, which the vets on the road determine. If the gallbladder is by chance punctured, for instance, a yellow fluid can seep on to the meat, and Vestergaard has to take away it.

“We’ve got six seconds per pig for one operation, after which there’s a new pig. We do the identical time and again. That’s how we earn our cash.”

It may be unrelenting for staff, and usually the velocity results in repetitive pressure accidents, however Vestergaard says staff at his plant commonly shift round to keep away from this. “It’s the regulation – the federal government has to guard us, so they are saying now we have to maneuver round.”

Vestergaard works at Horsens meat plant in northern Denmark – the most important and some of the trendy pig abattoirs in Europe, run by Danish Crown, Europe’s largest pork producer. All through his profession he has seen the trade in his nation rework.

Smaller abattoirs have nearly disappeared as a handful of enormous meat processors got here to dominate the market; robots and new applied sciences now full the heavier duties, saving the employees from potential damage. “They make the work simpler,” says Vestergaard. “However you need to bear in mind, pigs aren’t automobiles – they aren’t all the identical. The human eye can see variations, and robots could make errors.”

Virtually three a long time in the past, almost everybody Vestergaard labored alongside was Danish – the one different nationality was Germans, who travelled throughout the border to work as a result of labour requirements had been larger. At the moment, he says, almost two-thirds of the employees are migrants, many from Poland, together with refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Yemen, whereas about 35% are initially from Denmark.

These shifts mirror developments elsewhere throughout the continent. But Vestergaard’s expertise of the trade is completely different from meat plant staff in lots of different nations, as a result of he has remained working for 28 years in a sector famend worldwide for top workers turnover, low pay and exploitative situations.

Denmark is an outlier relating to employment situations within the European meat trade. Vestergaard and his colleagues are all instantly employed by Danish Crown, whereas in components of Europe’s meat trade, the Guardian has uncovered a flourishing two-tier system based mostly on low cost, versatile and steadily migrant labour, the place using intermediaries is commonplace.

Whereas meat firms in Denmark can use staff sourced through companies and subcontractors, staff have to be paid the identical wages as instantly employed workers, therefore there isn’t any monetary profit for firms who supply staff from intermediaries.

In Denmark, the common hourly wage in meat crops is €27-35 (£23-30) for prime earners, based on unions, in contrast with reportedly lower than half that in nations together with Eire and Germany. Danish meat plant staff obtain pensions, as much as 18 weeks paid maternity depart, sick pay, and 5 weeks paid holidays a 12 months.

‘We’ve got misplaced 1000’s of jobs to Germany’

All staff in beef and pork factories are represented by commerce unions, based on the meals union NNF, and so they work beneath collective agreements. “We’ve got some tremendous situations in Denmark in contrast with different meat manufacturing unit staff in Europe,” Vestergaard says, “however now we have to combat for these situations. If we don’t stick collectively, they are going to take it away.”

But Denmark has paid the worth for not following different nations throughout Europe in a race to the underside.

“We’ve got misplaced 1000’s of jobs to Germany,” says Jim Jensen of NNF, who claims the trade has misplaced two-thirds of all jobs up to now 20 years, primarily to Germany.

German shoppers are used to low cost, plentiful meat – from floor pork in bratwurst, sausage meat in blutwurst and schwarzwurst, to skinny slices of schnitzel. The nation’s meat trade has simply emerged from 20 years of extremely worthwhile, low-cost meat manufacturing that used cheaper overseas staff, subcontractors and the absence of a minimal wage to achieve a aggressive benefit. It has made billions for German meat firms, however staff have paid the worth.

Germany had a practice of robust commerce unions and a beneficiant welfare system however, because the labour market grew to become deregulated over the previous 20 years, the core enterprise exercise of the big meat factories was undertaken by contractors. As an alternative of instantly using native staff – who had beforehand skilled for 3 years beneath an apprenticeship system – the trade pivoted in direction of outsourcing labour to intermediaries, which recruited staff in jap Europe and past, paying them as little as €3 to €5 an hour.

Meat firms had used subcontractors to rent about two-thirds of their 90,000 staff, which saved them cash however led to accusations that they had been working a system that handled staff as “wage slaves”. In 2019, German labour inspectors visited 30 slaughterhouses with 17,000 staff and 90 subcontracting firms, and located 1000’s of labour regulation violations, together with 16-hour shifts, suspicions of non-compliance with the minimal wage, withholding of wage for tools and misconduct, and below-standard lodging, which had been managed, in lots of situations, by subcontractors.

Low margins in meat driving use of companies

Final summer time, as Covid ripped by Germany’s largest meat crops, 1000’s of migrant staff had been contaminated, and close by faculties and kindergartens had been pressured to shut. German shoppers got here face-to-face with the truth of the particular price of manufacturing cut-price meat: a precarious, low-paid workforce with no sick pay, unable to quarantine and residing in dismal situations.

“They toil and endure in silence like trendy slaves,” stated Fr Peter Kossen, a Roman Catholic priest and longtime activist for staff’ rights in meat crops.

The scenario prompted Angela Merkel’s authorities to ban giant meat firms from utilizing subcontractors and company staff in abattoirs. The German labour minister, Hubertus Heil, stated the brand new regulation would mark the top of “organised irresponsibility” within the trade.

“The authorized ban on using subcontracting in meat manufacturing was supported by us as an affiliation. We advocate a stage taking part in area for all our firms,” stated a spokesperson for the German meat trade affiliation, Verband der Fleischwirtschaft (VDF). In Could this 12 months, a minimal wage of €10.80 an hour was agreed for all staff, though based on VDF it has not but been declared legally binding by the labour ministry.