09 October 2009
Andrea Oates

It's only a couple of weeks past the longest day of the year but it's still barely light as I leave the house at 4am on a July morning for a 6.30 rendezvous with enforcement officers from the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority (GLA) in a picturesque Gloucestershire town in the Cotswolds. Early starts are business as usual for the GLA's inspectors, just as they are for the vulnerable workers they set out to protect.

The GLA was set up in response to the public outcry about the 23 Chinese cockle pickers controlled by a gangmaster (or labour provider) who were drowned in Morecambe Bay in March 2004. The authority operates in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, food processing and packaging and shellfish gathering and seeks to prevent "modern day slavery" by driving out abusive gangmasters who manage their workers with threats, house them in appalling conditions and control every aspect of their lives.

On the morning I accompany officers, the "intelligence-led" GLA has received information that a group of Romanian Roma travellers picking peas at a farm near the town are being poorly treated by their gangmaster, a labour supply agency based in the West Midlands. Eight officers have been pulled in for the investigation from Dorset and even Scotland, together with several interpreters; Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian workers are also employed in the farm's packhouses.

Officers arrived the evening before for a final briefing at a local hotel, and the
inspector leading this part of the investigation has already visited the areas around the fields and packhouses to carry out a risk assessment. The GLA officers wear high-vis jackets and stab vests, work in pairs, carry mobile phones and two-way radios (in case they are out of the signal range of a mobile). Though it is rare for organised criminals to be involved in supplying labour, it is not unheard of, and the names in this feature have therefore been changed to protect their identity.

Field study

As we reach the field, we spot the bright colours of the women's headscarves across the field, as well as several minibuses parked in the lane next to it, and find around 80 workers picking the peas and loading them into crates that the GLA find out are destined for the shelves of the biggest UK supermarkets.

The workers don't appear to have been provided with wet-weather clothing, and officers are doubtful that they will find they have received any health and safety training, despite the fact that this work is hard, repetitive and uncomfortable, and involves lots of manual handling. It's also paid as piecework, so people are stripping the pea pods from the vines as quickly as they can, and running to collect and stack crates.

There is, however, a solitary portaloo on the field. "That's an improvement on what we used to find," says one of the officers. "It was rare to see any toilet facilities when we first started up."

The GLA's inspectors quickly get to work. Two note down the registration numbers of the minibuses and, after an initial inspection which raises questions about the standard of vehicles, they contact the local police who are in charge of enforcing the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations. It later transpires that the drivers don't have the correct licences to be transporting so many workers, and the insurance for at least one of the vans is invalid; it's insured for building work only.

The police officers tell the driver, through the GLA's interpreters, that he must contact his insurance company to get this rectified. If he fails to do this and is caught driving it, the vehicle will be impounded.

Other GLA officers interview the pickers in the field.

"It's important to stress to the workers that we are on their side, to get them to trust us, so the role of the interpreter is really important. They need to be able to strike up a rapport to gain that trust," an officer tells me.

She starts to ask questions about their employment conditions: "How much do you get paid? How many hours do you work? Who pays you? Who is the boss? Is he here today? Does the boss sort out your accommodation for you? Do you pay for the house? How much? Where do you live? How many of you live there? How many bedrooms does the house have? Do you get any holiday? Do you get a break during the day? Do you have to pay for your transport? Are you provided with any protective clothing?"

The interpreter tells the officer the workers are all giving him the same answer and he thinks they have been coached in what to say. Several give the same address in Birmingham and say they are paid £5.75 per crate of peas - which seems unlikely as it's higher than the £4.75 a crate that officers know the gangmaster is being paid by the farmer!

Meanwhile, a man identified by several workers as "the boss" tells officers that he is just a friend of the family, helping out because his friend's brother has died and that he knows nothing about the business.

It can be difficult for officers to draw out accurate information as the Romanian workers have every reason to be afraid. As Gypsy and Roma travellers, they have faced discrimination and abuse in their home country. Recent events in Belfast - where a group of Roma were driven from their homes by racist attackers - have proved they face hostility in the UK too. Along with Bulgaria, Romania is an "A2" European state so its nationals have limited rights to work here. The workers are recorded as being self-employed, but this is clearly not the case. They don't provide their own equipment and they don't choose where and how they work, for example. 

Sub-minimum wage

Eventually, through discussions with the workers, it emerges they are being paid £3.50 a crate. Since a crate can take an hour to fill, this is well below the National Minimum Wage of £5.80 or the Agricultural Minimum Wage of £5.81. The officer starts to hear stories of six to seven hours work a day for five days for only £110. They also have to pay £50 a week for their accommodation which sounds pretty overcrowded, and to subsidise the diesel for the minibus that brings them to the field. That doesn't leave much to live on. 

After several hours interviewing the pea pickers, the officers head off for a team briefing with other officers who have been carrying out different aspects of the investigation to piece together what they have gathered so far. 

Elaine has been inspecting the farm's packhouses and reports that workers are being treated unfairly. Some workers report being shouted at and insulted by a supervisor. Reports also come to light that the Romanian workers in the fields are badly treated and allegedly worked for 14 days without being allowed a day off. Other officers have interviewed the farmer and seized documents from his offices and from the back of a van. The officer in charge of the investigation is currently inspecting the gangmaster's offices in Birmingham and will combine what she finds with the reports from the farm inspections and interviews, and those from inspections of the workers' accommodation.  Once this information has been collated and analysed, she will pass it onto the licensing team who will decide whether the licensing standards have been breached, and what action to take.  

They can refer the case to other government and local authority agencies, including child protection units, as their assessments have identified potential risks to families. They know that workers are living in squalid, overcrowded conditions. Often there are two adults sharing single beds. In one house, a child of seven and an elderly resident were trimming and bunching onions and placing them into boxes. In another, cockroaches were running wild. 

Standard requirement

The standards the GLA expects of gangmasters say:

• they must pay at least the minimum wage
• any accommodation they provide must be safe
• workers must not suffer physical or mental mistreatment or threats
• workers must be able to take rest breaks and must not be forced to work more than 48 hours a week.

They must also nominate someone with day-to-day responsibility for the workers' health and safety, carry out risk assessments before the work starts, and ensure any risks identified are properly controlled.

Where the gangmaster does not meet the standards, which looks probable in the case of the Cotswold pea pickers, their licence can be revoked, and the maximum penalty for operating without a licence is 10 years in prison and a fine. If they are breaching other legislation, the GLA will notify the appropriate agencies.

"There are really good gangmasters who comply with the terms of their licences and pay and treat their workers well," a GLA officer tells me. "The problem is that they are undercut by the unscrupulous ones. If we can drive out those who are exploiting their workers, we can help to stop this race to the bottom."

There are currently 1230 licensed gangmasters and the GLA has uncovered worker exploitation and illegal activity that has led to the revocation of 93 licences. It is because of this enforcement record that trade unions and others are calling for its remit to be extended so that vulnerable workers are protected across the whole economy.

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Stretching to construction?

Labour MP Jim Sheridan's Gangmasters Licensing Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill is due for its second reading on 10 October. The Bill would extend the Gangmaster's Licensing Authority's (GLA) enforcement work to the construction sector. Though as a private member's Bill without explicit government support it is unlikely to succeed, the pressure for the GLA's remit to be broadened to other sectors will continue. Rita Donaghy added to the impetus by calling for the GLA to license construction gangmasters in her recent report on deaths in the sector. Since the injury statistics don't include country of origin there is no way to validate anecdotal evidence that injury rates are higher among migrants, but they accounted for 12 out of the 72 fatalities on construction sites in 2008.

In July, the charity Oxfam published a report, Turning the Tide (www.lexisurl.com/hsw66), which points out that the GLA's work in agriculture and food processing has been highly effective. When it started out, more than two-thirds of the gangmasters who went through the licensing process had to improve the way they treated workers to get a licence, the report notes, but by October 2008 the proportion had fallen to around one in 20, suggesting the GLA's influence has raised standards. Independent research by Sheffield and Liverpool universities also found the gangmasters themselves supportive of the regime: four out of five were in favour of licensing and only one in five said their contact with the GLA was burdensome.

Oxfam draws on research showing migrants employed by gangmasters in construction are less likely to have access to health and safety training than their counterparts, are forced to work long hours, sometimes made to sleep on building sites and seldom provided with protective gear. The report quotes a Nigerian worker: "I tend to always take my own helmet, mask, gloves and boots, which I've picked up from other sites. The other workers don't have hats and boots, as they are not provided. There is no concern for our health and safety."

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Categories:
Construction, Features, Industry