After Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz. Strikes and Organic Intellectuals in the German Meat Industry
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Jul 27, 2023
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Abstract
For decades, migrant workers with temporary and service contract work in the German meat industry have rarely been recruited by trade unions. The Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz (“Occupational Safety and Health Inspection Act”) law implemented in 2021 aimed to grant equal employment conditions to the majority of the workers in slaughterhouses, creating new avenues for trade unions to gain more members and organize industry-level negotiations for better wages and a collective agreement. This article explores the lessons we can draw from the series of strikes that accompanied the negotiations. By relying primarily on participant observation in the meat industry strikes and employing an actor-centred perspective on industrial relations, the paper reveals the role of shop-floor organic intellectuals in mobilizing and demobilizing workers. The analysis of the strikes shows that organic intellectuals can be instrumental in articulating the resistance of subaltern groups, but they can also be co-opted by dominant groups to manufacture consent.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
Ana, D., & Voicu, Ștefan. (2023). After Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz. Strikes and Organic Intellectuals in the German Meat Industry. Sociologie Românească, 21(1), 93-113. https://doi.org/10.33788/sr.21.1.5
References
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Birke, P., & Bluhm, F. (2020). Migrant labour and workers' struggles: The German meatpacking industry as contested terrain, Global Labour Journal, 11, 1.
Briggs, D., & Dobre, D. (2014). Culture and immigration in context: An ethnography of Romanian migrant workers in London. London: Palgrave Pivot.
Connolly, H., Marino, S., & Martinez Lucio, M. (2017). ‘Justice for Janitors’ goes Dutch: the limits and possibilities of unions’ adoption of organizing in a context of regulated social partnership, Work, employment and society, 31, 2, 319-335.
Cosma, V.S., Ban, C., & Gabor, D. (2020). The Human Cost of Fresh Food: Romanian Workers and Germany's Food Supply Chains, Review of Agrarian Studies, 10, 2, 7-27.
Domșodi, D. (2019). Labour Relations and Labour Structures in Mediterranean Capitalism. Caporalato and Romanian Migration in the Southern Italian Agriculture, Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Sociologia, 64, 1, 127-142.
Drahokoupil, J. (2008). Globalization and the state in Central and Eastern Europe: the politics of foreign direct investment. Milton Park: Routledge.
Durst, J. (2018). Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire? From Municipal Lords to the Global Assembly Lines-Roma Experiences of Social Im/Mobility Through Migration From North Hungary, Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 4(3), 4-28.
Erol, S., & Schulten, T. (2021). Renewing labour relations in the German meat industry, WSI, 61.
Euractiv Special Report (2017). Farmers under pressure. https://euractiv.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/special-report/EURACTIV-Special-Report-2017.04-Farmers-under-pressure-1.pdf. Accessed on February 11, 2023.
Faire Mobilität (2022). Ein wirksamer Schritt. Ein Jahr Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz in der Fleischindustrie - eine erste Bilanz. Berlin: Faire Mobilität.
Francese, J. (Ed.). (2009). Perspectives on Gramsci. Milton Park: Routledge.
Frindert, J., Dribbusch, H., & Schulten, T. (2022). WSI Arbeitskampfbilanz 2021: Normalisierung des Arbeitskampfgeschehens im zweiten Jahr der Corona-Pandemie, WSI-Report, 74.
Gorodzeisky, A., & Richards, A. (2013). Trade unions and migrant workers in Western Europe, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 19, 3, 239-254.
Götzke, M. (2021). Tönnies und ein Jahr Fleischskandal. Das Ende der Ausbeutung?, Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Available at https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/toennies-und-ein-jahr-fleischskandal-das-ende-der-ausbeutung-100.html. Accessed on December12, 2022.
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Hopfgartner, L., Seubert, C., Sprenger, F., & Glaser, J. (2022). Experiences of precariousness and exploitation of Romanian transnational live-in care workers in Austria, Journal of Industrial Relations, 64, 2, 298-320.
Ivancheva, M. (2007). Strawberry fields forever?: Bulgarian and Romanian student workers in the UK, Focaal, 49, 110-117.
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Kesküla, E., & Sanchez, A. (2019). Everyday barricades: bureaucracy and the affect of struggle in trade unions, Dialectical Anthropology, 43, 109-125.
Kossen, P. (2018). Menschenwürdige Arbeit in der Fleischindustrie sichern!, Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, 72, 3, 200-203.
Kuhlmann, J., & Vogeler, C.S. (2021). United against precarious working conditions? Explaining the role of trade unions in improving migrants’ working conditions in the British and German meat-processing industries, Journal of Public Policy, 41, 3, 515-531.
Kurtz, D. V. (1996). Hegemony and anthropology: Gramsci, exegeses, reinterpretations, Critique of anthropology, 16, 2, 103-135.
Lackus, H., & Schell O. (eds) (2021). Mall of Shame - Kampf um Würde und Lohn # Rückblicke, Hintergründe und Ausblicke. Berlin: Die Buchmacherei.
Lazar, S. (2018). A ‘kinship anthropology of politics’? Interest, the collective self, and kinship in Argentine unions★, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24, 2, 256-274.
Marino, S. (2012). Trade union inclusion of migrant and ethnic minority workers: Comparing Italy and the Netherlands, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 18, 1, 5-20.
Marino, S., Roosblad, J., & Penninx, R. (2017). Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Meeus, B. (2013). Welfare through migrant work: what if the Romania ‘safety valve’ closes? Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 13, 2, 175-194.
Mense-Petermann, U. (2018). Eastern European service contract workers in the German meat industry-A case study in market making of a transnational labour market, ZiF-Mitteilungen, 2, 23-31.
Molinero‐Gerbeau, Y. (2021). The Problem is not Covid‐19, it's the Model! Industrial Agriculture and Migrant Farm Labour in the EU, Eurochoices, 20, 3, 69-74.
Narotzky, S. (2010). Gender, history, and political activism in Spain, In W. Lem, & P.C. Berger (eds), Class, Contention, and a World in Motion, 125-138.
Narotzky, S. (2015). The organic intellectual and the production of class in Spain, in J. Carrier, & D. Kalb (eds), Anthropologies of class: Power, practice, and inequality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53-71.
Perrotta, D. (2015). Agricultural day laborers in Southern Italy: Forms of mobility and resistance, South Atlantic Quarterly, 114, 1, 195-203.
Refslund, B. (2021). When strong unions meet precarious migrants: Building trustful relations to unionise labour migrants in a high union-density setting, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 42, 2, 314-335.
Refslund, B., & Sippola, M. (2022). Migrant workers trapped between individualism and collectivism: The formation of union-based workplace collectivism, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 43, 3, 1004-1027.
Seeliger, M., & Sebastian, M. (2022). The Influence of the Discursive Power of Unions in the Swift Re-regulation of Slaughterhouse Labour during the COVID-19 Crisis in Germany, Global Labour Journal, 13, 3.
Sepsi, S. (2021). Umbruch in der Schlachtindustrie? Jacobin.
Sepsi, S., & Szot, A. (2021). Das Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz in der Praxis. Eine erste Bilanz aus der Perspektive von Faire Mobilität. Berlin: Faire Mobilität.
Smith, G. (2004). Hegemony: critical interpretations in anthropology and beyond, Focaal, 43, 99-120.
Schulten, T., & Specht, J. (2021). Ein Jahr Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz-Grundlegender Wandel in der Fleischindustrie, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 71, 51-52, 36-41.
Specht, J., & Schulten, T. (2021). Mindestlohntarifvertrag in der Fleischwirtschaft, WSI Blog.
Stache, C., & Bernhold, C. (2021). The bourgeois meat hegemony: A contribution to explaining the persistence of animal super-exploitation in capitalism, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 46, 2, 167-186.
Streinzer, A., & Tošić, J. (2022). Thinking with Gramsci Today: Gramscian perspectives in ethnographies of Europe, Dialectical Anthropology, 1-10.
Susser, I. (2011). Organic intellectuals, crossing scales, and the emergence of social movements with respect to AIDS in South Africa AES Presidential Address for 2008, American ethnologist, 38, 4, 733-742.
Tapia, M., &Alberti, G. (2019). Unpacking the category of migrant workers in trade union research: A multi-level approach to migrant intersectionalities, Work, Employment and Society, 33, 2, 314-325.
Țoc, S., & Guțu, D. (2021). Migration and Elderly Care Work in Italy: Three Stories of Romanian and Moldovan Care Workers, Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 71-90.
Varga, M. (2016). Worker protests in post-communist Romania and Ukraine. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Voivozeanu, A. (2019). Precarious posted migration: The case of Romanian construction and meat-industry workers in Germany, Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 8, 2, 85-99.
Wagner, I. (2015). EU posted work and transnational action in the German meat industry, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 21, 2, 201-213.
Wagner, B., & Hassel, A. (2016). Posting, subcontracting and low-wage employment in the German meat industry, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 22, 2, 163-178.
Wunderlich, A., & Sommer, C. (2022). Klassenkampf erlernen-gewerkschaftliche Basisarbeit an der Universität, Außeruniversitäre Aktion. Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft im Gespräch, 1, 1, 141-150.
Adjan, F. (2023). The reorganisation of the German meat industry since the Labour Protection Control Law, European Federation of Food, Agriculture, and Tourism Trade Unions. https://effat.org/in-the-spotlight/the-reorganisation-of-the-german-meat-industry-since-the-labour-protection-control-law/. Accessed on February 20, 2023.
Alberti, G. (2016). Moving beyond the dichotomy of workplace and community unionism: The challenges of organising migrant workers in London’s hotels, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 37, 1, 73-94.
Ban, C. (2016). Ruling ideas: How global neoliberalism goes local. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ban, C., Bohle, D., & Naczyk, M. (2022). A perfect storm: COVID-19 and the reorganisation of the German meat industry, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 28, 1, 101-118.
Birke, P. (2022). Grenzen aus Glas. Arbeit, Rassismus und Kämpfe der Migration in Deutschland. Vienna: Mandelbau Verlag.
Birke, P., & Bluhm, F. (2020). Migrant labour and workers' struggles: The German meatpacking industry as contested terrain, Global Labour Journal, 11, 1.
Briggs, D., & Dobre, D. (2014). Culture and immigration in context: An ethnography of Romanian migrant workers in London. London: Palgrave Pivot.
Connolly, H., Marino, S., & Martinez Lucio, M. (2017). ‘Justice for Janitors’ goes Dutch: the limits and possibilities of unions’ adoption of organizing in a context of regulated social partnership, Work, employment and society, 31, 2, 319-335.
Cosma, V.S., Ban, C., & Gabor, D. (2020). The Human Cost of Fresh Food: Romanian Workers and Germany's Food Supply Chains, Review of Agrarian Studies, 10, 2, 7-27.
Domșodi, D. (2019). Labour Relations and Labour Structures in Mediterranean Capitalism. Caporalato and Romanian Migration in the Southern Italian Agriculture, Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai-Sociologia, 64, 1, 127-142.
Drahokoupil, J. (2008). Globalization and the state in Central and Eastern Europe: the politics of foreign direct investment. Milton Park: Routledge.
Durst, J. (2018). Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fire? From Municipal Lords to the Global Assembly Lines-Roma Experiences of Social Im/Mobility Through Migration From North Hungary, Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 4(3), 4-28.
Erol, S., & Schulten, T. (2021). Renewing labour relations in the German meat industry, WSI, 61.
Euractiv Special Report (2017). Farmers under pressure. https://euractiv.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/special-report/EURACTIV-Special-Report-2017.04-Farmers-under-pressure-1.pdf. Accessed on February 11, 2023.
Faire Mobilität (2022). Ein wirksamer Schritt. Ein Jahr Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz in der Fleischindustrie - eine erste Bilanz. Berlin: Faire Mobilität.
Francese, J. (Ed.). (2009). Perspectives on Gramsci. Milton Park: Routledge.
Frindert, J., Dribbusch, H., & Schulten, T. (2022). WSI Arbeitskampfbilanz 2021: Normalisierung des Arbeitskampfgeschehens im zweiten Jahr der Corona-Pandemie, WSI-Report, 74.
Gorodzeisky, A., & Richards, A. (2013). Trade unions and migrant workers in Western Europe, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 19, 3, 239-254.
Götzke, M. (2021). Tönnies und ein Jahr Fleischskandal. Das Ende der Ausbeutung?, Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Available at https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/toennies-und-ein-jahr-fleischskandal-das-ende-der-ausbeutung-100.html. Accessed on December12, 2022.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. (2021). Fleischatlas. Daten und Fakten über Tiere als Nahrungsmittel. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
Hopfgartner, L., Seubert, C., Sprenger, F., & Glaser, J. (2022). Experiences of precariousness and exploitation of Romanian transnational live-in care workers in Austria, Journal of Industrial Relations, 64, 2, 298-320.
Ivancheva, M. (2007). Strawberry fields forever?: Bulgarian and Romanian student workers in the UK, Focaal, 49, 110-117.
Jiang, J., & Korczynski, M. (2022). The role of community organisations in the collective mobilisation of migrant workers: The importance of a ‘community’-oriented perspective, Work, Employment and Society.
Kasmir, S. (2014). The Saturn Automobile Plant and the long dispossession of US autoworkers, in S. Kasmir, & A. Carbonella (eds.), Blood and Fire. Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor, Berghahn: New York-Oxford, 203-249.
Kesküla, E., & Sanchez, A. (2019). Everyday barricades: bureaucracy and the affect of struggle in trade unions, Dialectical Anthropology, 43, 109-125.
Kossen, P. (2018). Menschenwürdige Arbeit in der Fleischindustrie sichern!, Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, 72, 3, 200-203.
Kuhlmann, J., & Vogeler, C.S. (2021). United against precarious working conditions? Explaining the role of trade unions in improving migrants’ working conditions in the British and German meat-processing industries, Journal of Public Policy, 41, 3, 515-531.
Kurtz, D. V. (1996). Hegemony and anthropology: Gramsci, exegeses, reinterpretations, Critique of anthropology, 16, 2, 103-135.
Lackus, H., & Schell O. (eds) (2021). Mall of Shame - Kampf um Würde und Lohn # Rückblicke, Hintergründe und Ausblicke. Berlin: Die Buchmacherei.
Lazar, S. (2018). A ‘kinship anthropology of politics’? Interest, the collective self, and kinship in Argentine unions★, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24, 2, 256-274.
Marino, S. (2012). Trade union inclusion of migrant and ethnic minority workers: Comparing Italy and the Netherlands, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 18, 1, 5-20.
Marino, S., Roosblad, J., & Penninx, R. (2017). Trade Unions and Migrant Workers: New Contexts and Challenges in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Meeus, B. (2013). Welfare through migrant work: what if the Romania ‘safety valve’ closes? Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 13, 2, 175-194.
Mense-Petermann, U. (2018). Eastern European service contract workers in the German meat industry-A case study in market making of a transnational labour market, ZiF-Mitteilungen, 2, 23-31.
Molinero‐Gerbeau, Y. (2021). The Problem is not Covid‐19, it's the Model! Industrial Agriculture and Migrant Farm Labour in the EU, Eurochoices, 20, 3, 69-74.
Narotzky, S. (2010). Gender, history, and political activism in Spain, In W. Lem, & P.C. Berger (eds), Class, Contention, and a World in Motion, 125-138.
Narotzky, S. (2015). The organic intellectual and the production of class in Spain, in J. Carrier, & D. Kalb (eds), Anthropologies of class: Power, practice, and inequality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53-71.
Perrotta, D. (2015). Agricultural day laborers in Southern Italy: Forms of mobility and resistance, South Atlantic Quarterly, 114, 1, 195-203.
Refslund, B. (2021). When strong unions meet precarious migrants: Building trustful relations to unionise labour migrants in a high union-density setting, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 42, 2, 314-335.
Refslund, B., & Sippola, M. (2022). Migrant workers trapped between individualism and collectivism: The formation of union-based workplace collectivism, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 43, 3, 1004-1027.
Seeliger, M., & Sebastian, M. (2022). The Influence of the Discursive Power of Unions in the Swift Re-regulation of Slaughterhouse Labour during the COVID-19 Crisis in Germany, Global Labour Journal, 13, 3.
Sepsi, S. (2021). Umbruch in der Schlachtindustrie? Jacobin.
Sepsi, S., & Szot, A. (2021). Das Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz in der Praxis. Eine erste Bilanz aus der Perspektive von Faire Mobilität. Berlin: Faire Mobilität.
Smith, G. (2004). Hegemony: critical interpretations in anthropology and beyond, Focaal, 43, 99-120.
Schulten, T., & Specht, J. (2021). Ein Jahr Arbeitsschutzkontrollgesetz-Grundlegender Wandel in der Fleischindustrie, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 71, 51-52, 36-41.
Specht, J., & Schulten, T. (2021). Mindestlohntarifvertrag in der Fleischwirtschaft, WSI Blog.
Stache, C., & Bernhold, C. (2021). The bourgeois meat hegemony: A contribution to explaining the persistence of animal super-exploitation in capitalism, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 46, 2, 167-186.
Streinzer, A., & Tošić, J. (2022). Thinking with Gramsci Today: Gramscian perspectives in ethnographies of Europe, Dialectical Anthropology, 1-10.
Susser, I. (2011). Organic intellectuals, crossing scales, and the emergence of social movements with respect to AIDS in South Africa AES Presidential Address for 2008, American ethnologist, 38, 4, 733-742.
Tapia, M., &Alberti, G. (2019). Unpacking the category of migrant workers in trade union research: A multi-level approach to migrant intersectionalities, Work, Employment and Society, 33, 2, 314-325.
Țoc, S., & Guțu, D. (2021). Migration and Elderly Care Work in Italy: Three Stories of Romanian and Moldovan Care Workers, Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 71-90.
Varga, M. (2016). Worker protests in post-communist Romania and Ukraine. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Voivozeanu, A. (2019). Precarious posted migration: The case of Romanian construction and meat-industry workers in Germany, Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 8, 2, 85-99.
Wagner, I. (2015). EU posted work and transnational action in the German meat industry, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 21, 2, 201-213.
Wagner, B., & Hassel, A. (2016). Posting, subcontracting and low-wage employment in the German meat industry, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 22, 2, 163-178.
Wunderlich, A., & Sommer, C. (2022). Klassenkampf erlernen-gewerkschaftliche Basisarbeit an der Universität, Außeruniversitäre Aktion. Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft im Gespräch, 1, 1, 141-150.