Cultivating Trust: Labour Unions and Romanian Workers in the German Meat Industry

Introduction: 

“It’s gonna be a hot spring and summer”, said Elena. She was translating into Romanian the union secretary’s speech at a meeting with the workers of a foreign-owned slaughterhouse from a small Bavarian town. Elena was one of the two Romanian translators the labour union Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten (NGG) employed to help them communicate with the Romanian workers, the majority of the migrant workforce in the German meat industry. Her employment in the past couple of years was a direct result of the meat industry strikes of 2021.

After the strikes, the main demands of the unions and the workers were finally met. This boosted workers’ trust in the union, and the rank and file grew, justifying the hiring of translators. But lower demand in the German and global meat markets poses challenges to meat companies, their profitability depending in the past two decades on local consumers and exports to Southeast Asia and China. New EU environmental regulations, high energy prices exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and increased labour costs also put pressure on profits. One of the consequences is the consolidation of the sector, with some foreign-owned multinationals in the process of selling their assets and exiting the German market.

 

It is in this context that Jan, the union secretary, talked of a hot spring and summer to the workers of one of the slaughterhouses where it was still uncertain if it would be closed or sold. With new elections for the works council (Betriebsrat) coming up, the management is trying to oust the current council dominated by union members and replace it with more compliant workers in an effort to make the slaughterhouse more attractive to investors and avoid closure, and maybe even sell it at a higher price. One way of doing that is by using workers close to the management to spread rumours that weaken the trust in the works council and in the union.

We attended this meeting during our fieldwork in March 2024 to follow up on research we published about the 2021 strikes. Previously, we identified key actors in the strikes whom we referred to as “organic intellectuals”, or what union organizers call “trusted persons” or “multipliers”, and analysed their capacity to mobilise colleagues for collective action (Ana and Voicu 2023). This time we set out to look more closely at how trust between union organisers and workers at two Bavarian slaughterhouses is being cultivated.

Multipliers

Tobias is for NGG a “trusted person” or “multiplier”, acting as the main contact for the secretaries but also as catalyser in his community. Although Hungarian is his mother tongue, he also speaks some Romanian and became fluent in German after he moved to Germany in the 1980s. Language skills make him an essential asset for the management, a gatekeeper for employment and negotiation in the company for workers from Romania and Hungary. Knowledge of the language is essential for employees like Tobias to become “a nodal point for translating information from rural barns to town offices”, as Blanchette (2020) put it.

Iulia is a similar “nodal point” in another slaughterhouse we visited. She is a conveyor line worker and a works council member. She and her husband were among the first foreign workers to join the union. After the union supported her in a workplace conflict, she actively recruited and persuaded other Romanian workers to join the union. This experience solidified her commitment to the union, prompting her “to write manifestos, promote union awareness, and advocate for establishing a company-level council”.

At the union meeting that Stefan attended, the successful case of Iulia was presented by Jan as a reply to the slander that the union didn’t do anything except take a monthly fee. Successful cases such as hers are the main resource used by the union to cultivate trust and win new members. Moreover, as the Romanian employees are often isolated, Iulia’s bilingualism enables her to spread the word when the union successfully represents someone, but also keep workers updated with the works council proceedings.

Workers’ differentiation

We observed that the trust relationships between workers and unions were also dependent on workers’ differentiation based on production flows and workers’ life goals.

Tobias said that younger workers find slaughtering too difficult. Many of them quit after a few weeks. Moreover, they are more concerned with making as much money as possible rather than seeking long-term benefits, as many of them plan to return back to Romania with savings or a status signaling car. At the industry’s production peak, workers’ retention was indeed challenging because of a high turnover of employees. One way in which this was overcome was by employing workers with family obligations in Romania or those incurring debts.

The same family obligations have been used by the union to identify “trusted persons”. The main difference is that the union targets families that reside in Germany. In one slaughterhouse, two families, including Iulia’s, were instrumental in setting up the works council and Jan repeatedly thanked them during the meeting, pointing them out as trustworthy persons whom the union members could approach for help.

Jan commented that a clear signal that families want to stay in Germany is when they are looking for an apartment outside the common accommodation provided by the company. He said workers residing in the company-provided apartments are always at risk of getting thrown out and this hampers their engagement in collective action. His “multipliers” were those “who already knew inside, <<We’re not going anywhere>>.” Jan initially thought that employees without a family would be more risk-prone and spend more energy on labour struggles. Instead, families who decide to build a life in Germany tend to fight for better work conditions in the company.

Labour struggles in the future

The union’s efforts to build trust among Romanian workers in the German meat industry have been crucial, especially in the face of uncertainties such as possible plant closures and fluctuations in the global meat market. The NGG’s strategic hiring of Romanian translators after the 2021 strikes has improved communication and fostered stronger relations with workers. However, it remains to be seen on what basis the budding relationships of trust will continue. If the rumours of the slaughterhouse closure are confirmed, the NGG will have to negotiate a social plan with redundancy payments for the workers. If the slaughterhouse is sold and continues to operate then active work against intimidation and union busting could be back to square one.

References

1. Ana, Daniela, and Ștefan Voicu. 2023. “After Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz. Strikes and organic intellectuals in the German meat industry.” Sociologie Românească 21 (1): 93-113.
2.  Blanchette, Alex. 2020. Porkopolis: American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm. Duke University Press.