Germany’s largest meat packing plant Tonnies is getting slaughtered by local press and politicians after applying for employee support under the Infection Protection Act. The company was already under fire for taking such poor precautions against Covid-19 that 1,500 of its employees tested positive for the disease. The outbreak at the plant triggered a lockdown for the entire area, which by itself angered local residents as well as the wider German public. That the company’s investors would then go begging for charity from the state, essentially demanding that tax payers foot the bill for its employees, only served to throw more fuel on the fire. The outrage went all the way to the top, as Germany’s Minister of Agriculture Juliea Klockner said “I have little understanding for this,” in an interview in Bild am Sonntag. The outbreak at the plant had already served to bring attention to the horrendous working conditions the company was subjecting its staff to. The region’s labor minister Karl-Josef Laumann had a stark warning for the company. ” I would think very carefully about what the citizens of North Rhine-Westphalia are actually expected to put up with,” he said.
