What has just happened?
Due to international travel restrictions imposed during the global COVID-19 outbreak, an estimated 80,000 migrant workers, mainly from Europe, have been prevented from entering the UK to provide essential picking services in the agricultural sector.[1] As a result, at the beginning of the summer, the government launched its ‘Pick for Britain’ campaign, to encourage the unemployed, furloughed or students to take minimum wage harvesting and packing jobs in the agricultural sector. An inquiry carried out by BBC’s Farming Today[2] has revealed what the new workers experienced when performing roles usually held by foreign workers. The things they were faced with ranged from poor industry practices to fully-fledged human rights abuses and situations that could qualify as modern slavery.
What does this mean?
On the less severe side of the spectrum, workers complained about lack of proper breaks and toilet facilities, no sick pay or holiday leave, lack of communication about how many hours they were expected to work and being dismissed without notice. More concerning issues related to poor working conditions, with very little water or protection, unpaid hours, being made to work under tremendous pressure and to unrealistic targets (causing some to faint and/or vomit from exhaustion), dire housing conditions and even cases of verbal, physical and even sexual abuse. According to Euronews, these human rights abuses are not exclusive to Britain but are in fact also occurring in other Western European countries such as France and Spain.[3]
When people travel abroad for work, even within the EU, they are immediately more vulnerable than the native population. Due to the fact that most migrant workers are seasonal, in many cases they don’t know the UK labour standards or to what benefits they are entitled to, making them more vulnerable to exploitation. This vulnerability increases when the worker is reliant on their employer for accommodation. While the British workers consulted in the inquiry were able to walk away from their jobs after 10 days of bad treatment, foreign workers are in a more precarious and difficult position, having nowhere to go and no other prospect of work. In some cases, the agricultural tenancies[4] farmers provide come with astronomical rents and are in poor repair, leaving the workers with very little resources. All these conditions often qualify as modern slavery, in this case most pertinently debt bondage/bonded labour.[5]
The response of many farmers is that the fault lies at the door of gang leaders, who traffic the workers to the UK, provide them with cramped and unhygienic “accommodation” and use threats and violence to financially exploit them. This, however, does nothing to explain unworkable hours, intimidating behaviour from supervisors and poor hygiene practices related to preventing the spread of COVID-19. The latter issue is particularly contentious in packing plants, as poor hygiene could lead to the spread of infection among consumers.
An app is currently available to help spread awareness amongst foreign workers about what constitutes labour abuse in the UK. The Farm Work Welfare app commissioned and funded by The Clewer Initiative and developed in partnership with the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), the Modern Slavery Helpline (MSH) and the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), among others, contains a reporting tool and is available in eight different languages. Farm businesses, workers or local people can use it to flag up concerns, suspicions or seek help. The information gathered will be processed by the Modern Slavery Helpline and help identify hot spots, enable criminal investigations and most importantly, support victims.[6]
This is all very well, but what happens next is an issue that needs to be dealt with from a legal standpoint. Once these abuses are identified, labour laws need to be enforced and one way of doing that is to impose harsher penalties on those exploiting their workers, which will also act as a deterrent for future cases. This, coupled with more frequent inspections, raising the minimum wage and stricter guidelines regarding PPE and workplace hygiene could really make a difference to the lives of thousands of workers in the UK.
Written by Hannah Phelvin
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References:
[1] Herbie Russell, ‘5am starts, poverty wages and no running water—the grim reality of “picking for Britain”’, (Prospect Magazine, 30th May 2020)
[2] Lucy Taylor, ‘Special investigation: Alleged Mistreatment of farm workers’, (Farming Today, BBC Radio 4, 14th July 2020)
[3] Anelise Borges and Natalie Huet, ‘Invisible workers: Underpaid, exploited and put at risk on Europe’s farms’, (Euronews, 22nd July 2020)
[4] ‘Agricultural Workers’ Rights: Agricultural Tenancies’ (Gov.uk) <https://www.gov.uk/agricultural-workers-rights/agricultural-tenancies accessed 29th July 2020
[5] ‘What is Modern Slavery?’ (Anti-slavery International) <https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/#:~:text=Modern%20slavery%20is%20the%20severe,as%20cooks%2C%20cleaners%20or%20nannies.> accessed 29th July 2020
[6] ‘Farm Worker Welfare: The Farm Work Welfare App: a call to tackle modern slavery in farming, horticulture and food production(The Clewer Initiative) <https://www.theclewerinitiative.org/farmworkwelfare> accessed 29th July 2020
Disclaimer: This article (and any information accessed through links in this article) is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.