Tönnies group of companies regrets the view of the administrative court
After the Corona outbreak in the production area on the Tönnies company premises in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, all operations were temporarily stopped in June 2020. All employees who worked on the premises were sent into quarantine. This also included employees of the logistics subsidiary Tevex Logistics with their administrative staff and truck drivers, who had no contact with production at all. The proceedings before the Minden Administrative Court on Tuesday (August 15.08.3023, XNUMX) concerned the question of whether or not the Gütersloh district had prohibited Tevex Logistics from doing business with third-party customers outside the company premises. “In our opinion, she did that because the authorities had, with a few exceptions, banned all employees from entering the company premises and banned the activities of the companies based on the company premises,” says Tönnies managing director Dr. Gereon Schulze Althoff. The district administration contradicts this.
Shortly after the mass eruption, scientists at the Tönnies main plant got to the bottom of things. As is well known, the starting point of the infection was a single employee in the dismantling department. The ventilation conditions in the company premises played a significant role in the spread of the virus. “In our opinion, the inclusion of Tevex Logistics as a spatially and structurally separate company was therefore not appropriate,” says Gereon Schulze Althoff. In the end, operations in Rheda came to a standstill for four weeks.
“In connection with the outbreak, there was initially a lot of hectic and uncertainty, for which we have great understanding,” says Gereon Schulze Althoff. “There were few aspects that were obviously so incorrectly assessed that we had to demand our rights out of corporate responsibility.” It is regrettable that the administrative court did not follow the company’s assessment. Whether an appeal will be lodged against the ruling of the administrative court in Minden is now being examined.
