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FEATURE Migrant workers
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‘WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY’
Migrant workers are the UK food sector’s backbone. We need them – and they need Unite
Landworker continues to shine a spotlight on the exploitation and abuse migrant workers in the food, drink and agriculture (FDA) sector face, with Unite FDA determined to secure changes for this vulnerable group.
Unite FDA supported a motion put forward at the union’s most recent policy conference (July 2024), which called on the government to make changes to its seasonal worker scheme (SWS), as well as other temporary visas, to prevent workers being abused by their employers.
Unite’s David Imre, a migrant worker who is a convenor at the 2 Sisters poultry plant in Wales, gave a stirring speech at conference. He said he was seconding the motion “with deep conviction – not just as a delegate, but as someone who has lived this reality alongside so many others.”
David said that he and others arrived in the UK with “hope in our hearts and determination in our hands,” believing
if you worked hard you could build a better life. But the reality of life in the UK was very different.
“From the moment we arrived we felt how our accents, our visas, made us invisible – or worse, easy targets.
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To complain is to risk everything we came here for…. It’s exploitation, dehumanisation. It’s unacceptable in any country that claims to value fairness and workers’ rights. We are not disposable; we are human beings
Dave Imre, Unite convenor, 2 Sisters, North Wales
22 uniteLANDWORKER Summer 2026
"We arrived exhausted only to be taken to what they called ‘accommodation’ – but what felt more like a punishment,” he said.
David continued, “We have slept in damp, overcrowded rooms, waking up coughing. We have shared one bathroom with a dozen strangers. We have cooked in filthy kitchens, worked through sickness and injury because we were too scared to speak up. And yet we endured – because what choice did we have?”
David emphasised that it is migrant workers who keep the supply chain running. But when it came to their own health, dignity and rights, they just didn’t matter. Left stranded in “rat- infested rooms,” in rural areas, with no hours, no work, they couldn’t get to see a doctor or to buy food. “Because to complain is to risk everything we came here for,” he explained.
Addressing the conference, David said, “This is not just inconvenience.
Alamy
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