The COVID-19-crisis highlighted the plight of migrant workers in agriculture as well as the meat industry, internationally, but also in Germany. Two circumstances characterized this situation: On the one hand, mass infections in these industries, as in the meatpacking plants in the German city of Coesfeld, exposed exploitation at the point-of-production and bad living conditions. On the other hand, workers began to protest and demand improved conditions, as was the case with Romanian agricultural workers in Bornheim near the German city of Bonn. The author analyses both cases in the context of an unabated segregation and fragmentation of the working class thereby identifying a wider spectrum of common demands within a transnational perspective.