n By Emiliano Mellino
Polytunnels – work here can be especially difficult
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accommodation, such as a small shared room in a caravan, and gas and electricity bills.
This is in sharp contrast with seasonal worker programmes in other countries, like the US, where flights and accommodation costs are covered by the farm, or Canada, where the cost of accommodation is capped at CA$30 (£18) per week.
Workers also have income tax deducted directly from their payslips, even though many will not earn enough in the six months they are in the UK to reach the £12,750 minimum taxable threshold.
The government recently announced that from April 2023 it would stop requiring farms to pay seasonal workers above the minimum wage. But it also promised measures around safeguarding, including requiring farms to guarantee workers at least 32 hours of work per week.
Existing Home Office rules state that recruiters cannot “normally” refuse requests from workers to change employers, a vital safeguard that is supposed to ensure they are not left without work during the six months they are allowed to stay in the UK.
Yet, TBIJ found that some people were left without work for weeks or even months after being dismissed from a farm without being offered a new placement. Some people go back home after a few weeks because they can no longer afford to stay in the UK. Many end up thousands of pounds in debt.
Miljana Istokovic arrived from Serbia in September to work at Medlar Fruit Farm in Lancashire. Three weeks later she was dismissed, forcing her to get into £500 of debt to buy a return ticket home. She said that supervisors at the farm, which supplies Tesco and Lidl, would often shout or cut workers’ shifts if they briefly stopped picking, if they talked to colleagues or even if they had a phone in their pocket.
She waited in her caravan at Medlar for two weeks for her recruiter, Concordia, to transfer her to another farm. Eventually, her electricity was cut off, despite there being money left on the meter.
Asked what she thought of the seasonal worker scheme, Istokovic replied, “They consider us cheap labour and worthless people.”
25 uniteLANDWORKERSummer 2023
Slavery has been
outlawed, but it still exists within the farm. You can’t physically abuse people, but you can verbally abuse people and you can threaten them with their livelihood
Sybil Msezane, migrant worker
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This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism website. Some of the companies referenced in this article commented on this investigation’s claims – you can find out more by reading the full version of this and other TBIJ and VICE World News investigations.
See
www.thebureauinvestigates. com The story is They treat you like an animal – how British farms run on exploitation. Dated 27-03-23
This feature was first published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
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