"Germany drafts Romanian farm labor for coronavirus pandemic", 8 April 2020

Ioan was hesitant when the phone rang. The call from Germany came after Romanian Interior Minister Ion Marcel Vela's April 4 announcement that seasonal harvest workers would be given permission to leave the country to work abroad. Vela said the government had decided to allow workers to fly directly to Germany despite concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2019, Ioan harvested asparagus in Germany for the first time. After almost three months of backbreaking work — 10 hours a day, seven days a week — he returned home with a paltry €1,800 to show for his effort. That was because more than €1,000 of his wages went to covering food, lodging and other costs in Germany...

The first flights between Düsseldorf and Cluj and Cluj and Berlin, will start Thursday.

When they arrive in Germany, laborers must live and work separate from others for 14 days, and no one is allowed to leave the farms to which they are assigned. Employers have also been forced to adapt to strict housing regulations... Rooms are only allowed to be inhabited at half their regular capacity, and clothing and dishes must be washed hot. The government calls this "de facto on-the-job quarantine." ...

On the phone, the middleman assured Ioan that working conditions would be better this year and that he would be earning real money. Now there are even online platforms that allow foreign workers to seek out their own employers — though most are only in German.