Uwe Witt
Working Conditions in the Meatpacking
Industry
German Bundestag, July 2, 2020,
Plenarprotokoll 19/170, pp. 21208-21209
[Uwe
Witt is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German
state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. He is a human resources manager.]
Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.
Dear viewers at the TV sets.
Concerning improvements of the healthcare of employees
in the meatpacking industry, we really have nothing to discuss. I think all
delegations in the German Bundestag are agreed that the abuses must be
remedied. As always, it is only the approach to how which is very different.
While we are of the opinion that there are sufficient public officials and
instruments for the enforcement of the standards long since legally prescribed,
we see the greatest problem in the implementation and control. We do not
require additional control officials, as the Linke is planning. We require the strengthening of the present offices by personal placement, training and,
before all, consequential enforcement of guidelines through closely meshed
controls in the firms.
Worthy Herr Laumann, the situation of which
you have rightly complained, you could have remedied through efficient controls
at the state level. I put the question: Why did you not do that
Alexander
Krauss (CDU/CSU): He has done it!
Uwe
Schummer (CDU/CSU): He has done it!
or why was Corona first needed for you to
act? If, as the AfD and the Alternative Union of Workers have for years
demanded, a maximum limit [Obergrenze]
for temporary and contract labor of 15 percent would have been introduced,
there would be none of the present abuses of healthcare of the labor force.
Our colleagues in the Linke once again use
the opportunity to spread talk of class warfare under the cover of labor and
health protection. Their additional demands for strengthening works councils and
labor unions we may be read in any motion of the Linke. These come out of the last
century where the goal of the communists was the introduction of a soviet
republic.
Katja
Mast (SPD): That is an impudence!
In the Federal Republic of Germany, however,
there is as before the principle of the social market economy.
In the direction of the Greens, I must once
again remind that the citizens are not to be sold as dummies.
Ulli
Nissen (SPD): What have you been doing the whole time?
They postulate that meat must become more
expensive.
Beate
Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): That is not in the motion!
Do you really believe that increases in the
price of meat will somehow change working and health conditions in the
slaughterhouses?
Beate
Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): That is not in the motion! Stop with
the rubbish!
Yes, you actually do believe in such
nonsense. You also believe that by setting a price on CO2 the
climate will be improved.
Beate
Müller-Gemmeke (Greens): Speak on the theme for once!
But while I am on the subject of CO2:
Along your forced march to the introduction of E-mobility, you could not much care
less
for the healthcare of the labor force. Since it is not
elves [Kobolde], dear Frau Baerbock,
who mine cobalt in the Congo for the production of E-autos, but minor-age
children who either will never attain the age of majority or will bear
considerable, long-term health impairments. The main thing is, the green
eco-bourgeosie of Germany feels good! Your understanding of healthcare for the
labor force is, said with permission, simply hypocritical.
Many thanks.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
