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Article

11 Aug 2020

Author:
Holly Young, The Guardian

'I feel worthless': workers tell of gruelling life in Dutch meat plants

10 August 2020

...Speaking on condition of anonymity, Romanian and Polish workers described intimidation and gruelling conditions on the factory floor, inconsistent coronavirus measures and feeling afraid to report sickness, in a joint investigation by the Guardian and Lighthouse Reports. All are employed by agencies and most are currently working at, or have recently left, the Dutch company Van Rooi Meat.

The Netherlands is a food powerhouse... But the dark underbelly of that success story has been exposed, say union representatives, by the coronavirus pandemic. Roughly 80% of the industry’s workers are from central and eastern Europe...

[P]eople working at Van Rooi’s Helmond and Someren sites reported feeling pressured to “work beyond their physical limits”, verbal abuse and intimidation. One worker claims he was physically pushed and grabbed by Dutch supervisors... Van Rooi Meat says it is not aware of such cases or of verbal abuse. It added: “We hope these workers come to us so we can get to the bottom [of] this.”

...Van Rooi told the Guardian: “We treat everyone as human and we are always open for dialogue. We feel that we treat the workers properly...”

Workers at both sites reported feeling unsafe during the pandemic... Workers claim that precautions were lacking... Workers reported seeing ill people continue to work with little social distancing.

Van Rooi Meat told the Guardian it had taken all necessary measures... It said hundreds of thousands of euros had been spent on measures and there had been no cases since 9 June...

The pandemic has galvanised action in the Netherlands: notably through a taskforce... recommending stricter agency regulation. The union argues workers should be directly employed by meat companies...