Migrant workers in the EU are routinely exploited by shady sub-contractors while authorities are conveniently looking the other way. The workers are mostly from eastern or southern Europe.

They are forced to work long hours in appalling conditions and are being housed in run down moldy joints where they are packed together, 2 or 3 people share a small bedroom and are transported to work packed into minivans or buses.

These situations have been known to exist for a long time but the COVID-19 crises has now made this news headlines. Scores of workers are infected with corona virus because the cramped conditions they live and work in make it impossible for them to socially distance.

Note that these news articles talk about meat workers in Germany, a country that, according to fender, showcases superior handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Well seems like our purple and blue haired EU PARDians forgot to mention that this does not include poor migrant workers.


Here's the link to the article I mentioned, all PARDians are encouraged to check and verify it. Date of the article is May 11 2020 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-modern-slavery-at-the-heart-of-german-slaughterhouse-outbreak/a-53396228


To prove my claim that these situations have been known to exist for a long time I post this vid that was uploaded on December 17 2013.

Again I encourage all PARDians to check it. Note the 14 - 20 hour shifts for very little money in freezing meat factories and the appalling housing conditions.




It's now 8 days since this news broke and it seems like none of our frequent EU posters felt the need to make a topic about it. While at the same time these posters loudly jump all US immigrant related issues to point out how bad and disgraceful the US deals with immigrants.

I'm interested to see if the double standard far left activists will show up in this thread to explain this situation.

on 90 day fiance anyone coming over has to have a sponsor or their partner needs to prove they can financially support them for like 10 years. when leftists cheer on bringing over undocumented migrants they're really just setting them up to work in places like this. for some of them it may even still be better than where they came from, wartorn areas, cartel areas, etc. but the democrats are supposed to have worker's rights as a staple of their platform, and this contradiction seems to be one they can't rectify. following a general pattern of minority driven identity politics washing away the union and worker's rights origin of the democratic party. year after year it becomes more about race policies and far less about jobs. the only semblance left is attacking billionaires, nothing that can clear legislature of course, but vague attacks on the rich to drum up support.

The same happens in Southern Europe with African migrant workers being exploited at plantations. This is nothing new and most Europeans know that this happens.

Honestly it's such bullshit that our govt doesn't take a stand and forces these companies to pay at least minimum wage. However, this is what you get with liberal governments. They'll never commit to regulation of industry.



I can assure you that left-wing parties here are not at all in favour of more migrant workers. All large immigrant labour forces here have come in waves initiated by our classical-liberal party, the VVD. Parties on the left are in favour of stricter regulations on working conditions and wages, which would eliminate the need to get labour forces from poorer nations.

This post was edited by balrog66 on May 19 2020 11:35am

This isn't exclusive to the EU, we have sweat shops in canada

I've written about this issue in the coronavirus thread in late April:
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=82599638&f=119&p=557459254#p557459254



Lo and behold, we've had several bad corona outbraks in the last 10 days in these overcrowded barracks where the Eastern European farm hands and slaughterhouse laborers are housed...

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 19 2020 11:40am

this too easy of a layup so i’ll just say that this is a sad situation

yeah the old contradicting “they’ll do the work locals won’t do for cheaper” then wonder how it ends up that people end up working for under min. Wage.

i dont fault people fleeing from shit situations so they can just work and buy food.

yeah i generally dont filter anything into a 3+ party system just because id end up looking like an idiot. im still confused constantly about who supports what in the EU, other than far right nationalism protectionist policies.

where does Angela Merkel fall? i seem to remember her being very pro Syrian refugee and exceeding numbers of most other nations. outside of massive support from the govt im sure many still end up working in unsafe conditions.



i was exposed at a young age to the fact that most migrant workers send a LARGE chunk of their pay back home via western union. never hated them for that reason alone, just trying to feed their families that they dont even get to see anymore.

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 19 2020 11:41am

I remember seeing a VICE docu about that. An area in Spain packed with plastic greenhouses of a size it can be seen from space. Illegal africans slog there (work isn't the right word) to grow EU's tomatoes and vegies that end up in supermarkets for rock bottom prices.



This post was edited by Djunior on May 19 2020 11:40am

Same goes for tomatoes in Southern Italy. Maffia's got their hand in that trade, so the workers make 10-12 hour days for ~€25...

Great post!



Obligatory pic: