Spar boss: mask requirement for supermarket employees “unfair”

“I am in favor of an end to this injustice. If it is necessary for health reasons, it should be done. Otherwise I consider it to be discrimination,” said the savings boss on Friday in an interview with the newspaper “Die Presse”. Above all, the employees did their work every day during the crisis, but now their needs are being ignored. But the prevailing rule is also discriminatory for customers. Health is a top priority at Spar. Spar is a pioneer in company vaccinations, two thirds of the employees are vaccinated. But Poppmeier does not believe in compulsory vaccination.

Regarding the prices in the grocery trade, the Spar boss said that it is difficult to predict how these will develop because the prices are always subject to fluctuations. “At least for international products, you have to rely on global supply chains, and the price is currently going up there.” According to a recent study, Wifo expects food prices to rise significantly by mid-2022.

He can understand the displeasure of farmers about low margins and simultaneously increasing profits in the grocery trade, but it must be taken into account that the grocery trade did not perform equally well everywhere “There were locations, for example in seasonal areas, in which there were sales declines of up to minus 90 percent” said Poppmeier. The market conditions would also have to be taken into account. One could not “let the consumers pay for the structural failures in agriculture”, said the Spar boss to the “press”.

Poppmeier is also skeptical of the environmental ministry’s plans for a one-way plastic deposit. The implementation of such a measure would be associated with “insane effort” and would only achieve a minimal effect. “I very much hope that it doesn’t. Nothing about that is in the government program. The result would be an endless flood of multiple trips, which would even worsen our environmental balance sheet.”