Lake District: IG Bau wants better insurance for seasonal workers
The industrial union Bauen-Agrar-Umwelt (IG BAU) calls for better health insurance protection for foreign seasonal workers in the Mecklenburg Lake District. “Harvest workers who are only employed on local farms for a short time must be fully insured in the event of illness. Seasonal workers who work three months or less in the region are still in a worse position than their German colleagues,” says Wolfgang Ehlert from IG BAU Ostmecklenburg-Vorpommern. Even those who only come from abroad for a short-term job need full health insurance cover from day one, according to the district chairman of the agricultural union IG BAU.
At present, employers only have to take out what is known as “private group insurance” for their foreign employees. With its services, this is far from reaching the level of statutory health insurance. “This means that seasonal workers actually have poorer insurance protection. But it cannot be that the people who do hard physical work in the Mecklenburg Lake District during the harvest season are not adequately protected if they fall ill. In concrete terms, this can mean that the employees are left with part of the treatment costs,” says Ehlert.
He appeals to the local members of the Bundestag for the traffic light parties to campaign for a corresponding regulation – and quickly. Because the governing parties had promised to improve the precarious situation of the harvest workers. “The coalition agreement expressly states: ‘For seasonal workers, we provide full health insurance coverage from day one,'” said the IG BAU district chairman.
