FAOS-seminar: The Pork Value Chain in Denmark and Europe – labour under pressure?

The pork value chain in Europe is under constant reconstruction. Fierce competition and the quest for efficiency are putting labour under constant strain, working conditions are changing and jobs are moving across borders. How does this affect industrial relations along the pork value chain?
That is the focus of the Meat-Up Ffire project, which analyses working conditions and industrial relations in the pork industry in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Denmark.
This seminar will present the project and the preliminary output of the analysis of the pork value chain in Europe, with a special focus on the pork value chain in Denmark. The trade unions in Denmark has been able to secure fairly good working conditions and wages for employees across the pork value chain, but the price has been a significant loss of jobs in Danish slaughterhouses.
Today a large percentage of Danish pigs are slaughtered in German slaughterhouses, where a significant share of the workers are working under poor conditions with low wages. As for breeding there has been a development towards still larger farms, primarily producing piglets for export to other European countries. Has Denmark moved up or down the international pork value chain?

9.15-9.30: Presentation of the Project Meat-Up Ffire, University of Urbino
9.30-10.00: Presentation of the first outputs of the analysis of the pork value chain
10.00-10.45: The pork value chain and the working conditions in Denmark, Steen E. Navrbjerg, FAOS – University of Copenhagen
10.45-11.00: Coffee break
11.00-11.30: Experiences in the Danish meat industry, Bjarne Thomsen, Chief Consultant, NNF, Denmark
11.30-12.00: The European Meat Industry from a European Trade Union Perspective, Kristjan Bragason, EFFAT – the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions
Place: Centre of Health and Society (Center for Sundhed og Samfund)
Øster Farimagsgade 5A, room 16.2.55 (Building 16) 1014 Copenhagen C.
Meat–Up Fire is an agronym for the project title ‘Fairness, Freedom and Industrial Relations across Europe: Up and down the (porc) meat value chain

Source: FAOS