René Springer, May 13, 2020, Working Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry

René Springer

Working Conditions in the Meatpacking Industry

German Bundestag, May 13, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/159, p. 19730

[René Springer is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the eastern German state of Brandenburg. He is an electrician and navy veteran and here responds to a motion concerning working conditions in the meatpacking industry. Hubertus Heil (SPD) is the German Minister for Labor and Social Affairs. Hartz IV is a large-scale unemployment compensation program.]

Herr President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.

In some slaughterhouses in Lower Saxony up to 50 percent of the workers are ill, not with Covid-19 but with tuberculosis, and not just in recent weeks but since 2018. Thus the problem of working conditions in the meatpacking industry being hazardous to health is no new problem and the Federal government has been aware of it for years. With respect, Herr Minister Heil, the preceding helps no one out of a bad situation.

In past years our neighbors Belgium, France and Denmark have spoken critically of the prevailing pay and working conditions in our meatpacking sector in Germany. Not just anyone mentioned that; the Federal Labor Ministry said that in its answer to a minor inquiry from the year 2017. The present Corona outbreak in the plants of the meatpacking industry is thus the consequence of an inveterate failure of the Federal government.

The workforce, especially from eastern Europe, for years was exploited in German slaughterhouses. They had to live and work under conditions in part inhuman and hazardous to health. That – as expressed by a pastor at a recent demonstration in Coesfeld – is nothing other than modern slavery. Yet thousands of the single and the independent, predominantly from eastern Europe, were employed with dubious work contracts and at low wages. Thereby was the state not only relieved of millions in social spending but the domestic and foreign workforces were played off against one another as to wage levels. Employees in the meatpacking industry today earn approximately 36 percent less than in the overall economy. Consider for yourself what one third less in the pocket is.

Where do the low wages come from? Perhaps it is coherent with the 20 percent decline in the number of the German workforce in the meatpacking industry in the past ten years while the number of the foreign workforce has increased over 270 percent. This mostly eastern European workforce unfortunately figures this exploitative labor situation to be abundant because they do not have to pay rent, being crowded together in collective housing, but also because they have a claim to child support [Kindergeld] in Germany

            Ulli Nissen (SPD): That just had to come up again!

            Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): Underground!

and at fixed benefits, Hartz IV. On the whole, it provides an income far beyond that available to people in their home country. This form of self-exploitation is primarily made possible by the freedom of movement in the European Union and the Federal government’s consequent turning a blind eye [konsequente Wegschauen] and it will continue to suppress wages. And the taxpayer – and this is the idiocy of the whole thing – subsidizes the new form of slavery with social benefits.

That needs be the social Europe of which you are always speaking, as you do, Herr Heil. You speak of a social Europe but intend the dissolution of the sovereignty of the nation-state into an EU super-state on the backs of the employed. You therefore tolerate, Herr Minister, therefore tolerates the Federal government and the overwhelming portion here in parliament, all that is cheap, and not only in the meatpacking industry. For years we see the common practice of wretched working conditions and wretched wages in agriculture, in the security business, in the construction industry, in the packaging branch. We all still well remember the debate we conducted at Christmas.

Thereby lie at hand the solutions which are in the interest of all. First of all, there ought not to be any cheap imports, no cheap foreign meat. We must reconsider a sensible formation of globalization by means of a limitation of the EU’s freedom of movement. We must regionalize agriculture and we need a stronger and closer control of plants by public officials, not only at the federal but also there where the responsibilities lie, at the state and local levels.

When 80 percent of the employees in the meatpacking industry have a work contract, and thus are independent, then it must be asked whether it would be suitable to forbid this instrument in this branch.

Let us do nothing prematurely. Ultimately there will be fair working conditions and fair wages when the product has a justified price. This is a matter where each must look in the mirror [an seine eigene Nase packen muss]. Wage dumping and bad working conditions can be prevented not with words but actions. Herr Heil, action has often been announced; this time yet again. Finally clean up your own act [Räumen Sie endlich auf]!

Thank you very much.

[Translated by Todd Martin]

Gerold Otten, May 7, 2020, Healthcare and Nuclear Weapons

Gerold Otten

Healthcare and Nuclear Weapons

German Bundestag, May 7, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/158, pp. 19667-19668

[Gerold Otten is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from Bavaria. He is an aerospace industries sales manager and has a number of years’ experience as a Bundeswehr pilot, experience which includes flying the Tornado fighter-bomber. He here responds to motions by the Linke party calling for a shift of government spending from nuclear weapons to healthcare.]

The Federal government for some time has not questioned the nuclear participation. It is a concept within NATO’s deterrence policy. It is basically defensive and includes four essential elements. First, it makes clear that the will and wealth of the USA, with its nuclear weapons, is to stand up for those NATO members which are not nuclear powers. Second, it entitles participants to consultation on the commitment of nuclear weapons and the participating states declare themselves – third – ready to deploy [vorzuhalten] the corresponding delivery system [Trägersystem]. Fourth, the states oblige themselves to the stationing of atomic weapons on their state territory.

In a peace-loving society like ours, there is not much political profit in this theme. However, that a political question is not popular has for long not meant that it need not be answered. And it is most closely bound up with the delivery system, which in Germany is the Tornado fighter aircraft. The question of a successor has been an open question for years. Now, the Defense Minister quietly and lightly lets fall a procurement decision for 93 Eurofighters and 45 American F-18s. How nice for her defense zone project in northern Syria that this also occurs without consultation with coalition partners and without previously informing the Bundestag. That might be taken for daring, but for me that is dilettantism.

The decision was also the occasion for the present motions of the Linke. It basically means the end of Germany’s nuclear participation.

            Tobias Pflüger (Linke): Well discerned!

Those bringing the motions base this demand upon allegedly striking deficits in the healthcare infrastructure of Germany, Europe and the world. And since the Linke do not wish to incur the suspicion of acting nationally, the freely resourced tax money shall not only benefit the German healthcare system but that of the entire world.

            Sevim Dağdelen (Linke): No, the WHO!

The Linke plead that, as we have just heard from Herr Gysi, with a motion from the year 2010 of the Union, FDP and SDP. They assert that at that time the Bundestag decided on a withdrawal of atomic weapons – only, that is fake news, Herr Gysi.

Impressed by Obama’s declaration of wanting to commit himself to a world free of atomic weapons, the Bundestag then demanded that the Federal government undertake all efforts for the withdrawal of atomic weapons from Germany and that the world be made free of nuclear weapons.

            Gregor Gysi (Linke): Yes, just so!

On this question, the AfD has a clear position: We are in favor of nuclear disarmament and – I say this here quite clearly – that includes the withdrawal of U.S. atomic weapons from Germany.

Can one thus vote for the transparent motions of the Linke? Quite clearly not. For the AfD wishes that the states of the world resolve their conflicts peacefully. The condition of a peaceful world will occur when all states abandon a violent enforcement of their demands and instead go the way of exchange of interests and mutual advantage. Yet the world is far away from this desirable condition and I fear will never attain it. Politics must again re-orient itself to what is politically sensible and feasible, thus to how the world is and not to however one may happily desire it to be. We therefore represent the way of Realpolitik and not that of alien utopias.

A one-sided renunciation of the nuclear participation would not in the least improve the present security situation of Germany and the world; the opposite would be the case. NATO would then not only be brain-dead, as per President Macron’s opinion, it would actually stand at death’s door. In our view, an atomic disarmament is only possible if all nuclear powers agree to a gradual reduction of their nuclear weapons arsenals. To persuade the nuclear powers of this goal was the intent of the Bundestag’s resolutions, and nothing other. This goal today is of even greater priority, and certainly before the background of the giving of notice of the INF treaty. The AfD will pursue this goal at all times and with all power. The utopias of the Linke we decisively reject.

I thank you for your attention.

[Translated by Todd Martin]  

Albrecht Glaser, May 7, 2020, European Central Bank Loan Purchases

Albrecht Glaser

European Central Bank Loan Purchases

German Bundestag, May 7, 2020, Plenarprotokoll 19/158, pp. 19611-19612

[Albrecht Glaser is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the western German state of Hessen. He has a number of years experience as a public administrator and elected official and is currently a member of the Bundestag finance committee.]

Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Respectable citizens have undertaken real responsibility. Out of concern for our state, they have taken pains to defend on constitutional grounds this country’s democracy against the EU’s accumulation of competences. Do not confuse the independence of the ECB [European Central Bank] with the over-stepping of its legal treaty mandates. This distinction is decisive and it is here being obtrusively jumbled up [penetrant durcheinanderworfen].

After five years’ proceedings and the commitment of much money and time, the petitioners have obtained a decision from the Federal Constitutional Court which now is causing excitement. In previous interpretation and analysis of the decision, a colleague of the Greens from this house urged a court reprimand and in addition conducted an unmitigated personal attack upon the president of the Court.

            Carsten Schneider (SPD-Erfurt): My goodness!

Basically, it concerns a state loan purchase program of the ECB system with an already disposed volume of around 3 trillion euros, and it concerns the intention to take upon the books of the central banking system, with foreseeable, fatal consequences, additional debts of European states of unlimited term and size. The liability issue is completely ignored; no one can answer it, anyone who understands a bit of it knows that it is immense.

The Court holds that the Federal government and the Bundestag have violated the rights of the complainants under Article 38, paragraph 1, line 1, in conjunction with Article 20, paragraphs 1 and 2, in conjunction with Article 79 of the Basic Law [Grundgesetz] – that is not a small detail.

The Federal government and the Bundestag, instead of taking the lead, had neglected to call the ECB to account for the lack of a suitable proportionality test for the implementation of the purchase program. The considerations of the ECJ [European Court of Justice] of the proportionality of the ECB’s proceedings were not comprehensible and anyway presented in this case an over-stepping of the competence of the ECJ. Even courts can over-step their competences.

The Constitutional Court, right honorable ladies and gentlemen, having an oversight role to inquire into substantiated complaints, as it is said, of the over-stepping of competences by EU organs, in this case had to diverge from the viewpoint of the ECJ.

The guardian of the treaty is this Constitutional Court; it has done this, its duty. This was and is urgently necessary; since the ECJ has never been the guardian of subsidiarity and the principles of conferred powers [Einzelmächtigung]. It has already for many years, without any legal basis, adjudicated the EU treaties, and has ruled that the legislative authority [Rechsetzung] of the EU basically displaces national law, especially national constitutional law. You should re-assess the value of the Basic Law, the jubilee of which has been recently celebrated, ladies and gentlemen; this Basic Law is moribund.

According to the Federal Constitutional Court, the rights of the complainants were violated because the self-proclaimed sovereign rights of the EU organs must submit to the constitutionally defended right to democracy of every citizen of this country. Thus, the constitutional complaints were essentially confirmed, all procedural costs to be refunded to the lead complainants. The [EU] Commission declares with sovereign authority – without itself being a state – that EU law breaks national law. The decision will therefore be precisely tested. Der Finger steht.

This power politics viewpoint is also just now being expressed by Jean Claude Juncker. Who would have thought it? Bruno Le Maire and Giuseppe Conte see their interests as highly indebted countries endangered. They now see the neutrality endangered by the Federal Constitutional Court, which only admonished the observance of the EU treaty competences; the Constitutional Court does nothing other – power politics versus law. We indeed are experiencing a European Politics Live.

The finance ministers and euromaniacs of all colors distort the decision of the Constitutional Court, asserting that it acknowledged – that it in fact again amplified – that the ECB had in principal the right to purchase state loans. That is nevertheless not the case. The Federal Constitutional Court rather more expounded on the administration of the criteria which the ECJ itself set out for loan acquisition which, not violating the ban on state financing, meet with important consideration – to cite verbatim. On the question of state loans, the Federal Constitutional Court sees itself in principal bound by the interpretation of the ECJ, and not because it may itself have been persuaded.

That is a regrettable declaration of submission by the Federal Constitutional Court which shows

            Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague, you must come to 

             a conclusion.

that in the EU treaties there is no instrument to prevent a systematic, steady expansion of competences in this union of states, ladies and gentlemen, and that is the actual problem. Therefore, this problem which we have before us will become further knotted and the EU will run further into heavy seas.

            Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki: Herr colleague.

Many thanks.

[Translated by Todd Martin]