Worker representation is an important part of protecting migrant workers and fostering better business practices. As highlighted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO Conventions 87 and 98, all workers have the right to freedom of association.
The seasonal workers tending the fields in the UK’s agricultural sector are no exception. Sadly, there are no known examples of representation among workers on the UK’s seasonal worker visa (SWV), which was instituted after Brexit, and they face multiple barriers to achieving it. These migrant workers are used as a cheap foreign labour force. For them this key human right is denied.
I have worked with seasonal migrant workers since 2019, and I worked on a British farm myself back in 2004. Comparing my experience to what SWV holders go through today, I can see how privileged I was to be protected by the EU’s laws both as a worker and as an EU citizen.
As an EU citizen, I could more easily seek help from migrant support organisations and institutional bodies that were responsible for equality in the workplace. We European migrant workers shared information about where to get help with each other, when needed. We still faced problems, of course. But being an EU farm worker in the UK back then was much easier than being on the SWV today.
Workers on the SWV do not have the level of privilege that we did. They lack both a route to settlement and the legal protection provided by EU institutions and many British laws. Within the government there are no effective institutions that protect their rights or help them to receive representation when needed. They depend often exclusively on their employer, a farmer, who gets to decide how they will treat their workforce.
Not all farmers are bad people, by any means. But enough are bad employers to make this development deeply worrying. Brexit and the SWV that came out of it has without doubt made the UK’s temporary agricultural workforce more vulnerable to exploitation and rights violations than before the UK left the EU.
The dangers of impermanence
Agricultural workers in Scotland do not have many places to turn when things go wrong. Our organisation, the Worker Support Centre, is trying to fill that gap.
Some of the workers who turn to us are scared. They say they raised issues about the workplace or their living conditions with their supervisors, but rather than being offered a remedy they felt threatened instead. And it is true that, on many farms, workers can get dismissed if they complain. For most the risks are too great. Workers often have families back home who depend on them, and they know those families would suffer if they raised their heads – let alone try to collectively organise.
Efforts to seek information, support and unionisation are beset with obstacles. Some are found in the way the seasonal worker visa scheme is designed. For example, the SWV is only valid for up to six months. It’s not enough time to raise issues, receive legal support, and reach an appropriate remedy. So workers must decide: either start a risky process that is unlikely to finish, or accept what is given to them.
The concept of temporality serves to excuse exempting workers on the SWV from the rights and entitlements enjoyed by most other workers. Harm and suffering is, apparently, acceptable on a temporary basis. They’re not here long, right?
Isolating migrant workers ensures that nobody knows about the harms and humiliation they experience on British soil
The current model of trade unions is another barrier to progress. It does not reflect the current socio-political and economic realities of this sort of work. Although the SWV scheme was piloted in 2019, trade unions have still not adjusted to meet the needs of seasonal migrant workers and other workers on tied and temporary visas. Their conditions for membership, including the membership fees and minimum time requirements before representation becomes available, prevent them from offering real help and support to seasonal workers.
Geography presents additional problems to unionisation. The rural locations of farms and the poor internet in these areas increase workers’ isolation and prevent them from connecting with each other or accessing information on rights or support.
For the same reason support services based elsewhere struggle to reach them. And, as they come from different countries, workers often have limited knowledge about their rights and entitlements in the UK in addition to facing language and cultural barriers. This makes them vulnerable to humiliation, exploitation and discrimination, and far too many live lives of isolation, insecurity and fear.
Isolation and the poor quality of life are common topics in our meetings. As one worker said:
After a working day you go home, where you comfortably sit with your family in a cosy room. We go to our cold, mouldy caravans. We are lucky to be living in caravans because other seasonal migrant workers live in metal shipping containers with no showers or toilets or kitchen … so they take turns, often queuing for a few hours to cook an evening meal.
There are so many seasonal workers but not enough facilities … we live in the middle of fields. We cannot easily reach shops to buy food because there is no bus stop near us. Because we are not allowed to invite friends from other farms, we feel so isolated.
Isolating migrant workers serves as an effective means to silence them. It ensures that nobody knows about the harms and humiliation they experience on British soil.
Worker Power project
The Worker Support Centre recently established a project to try to respond to these issues. Called Worker Power, it aims to build solidarity among seasonal and other migrant workers to increase worker representation in policy and workplaces.
I am part of the team that conducts intensive outreach in north east Scotland in person, and online across Scotland. We meet with workers during their days off in places where they’re not supervised and where they feel safe, so that we can have open conversations about their issues and opinions.
We listen to them and take their concerns seriously. We carefully evidence the ways workers are exploited and prevented from associating with one another. We obtain video and photographs wherever we can so that exploitative working and living conditions can be documented and seen.
But there are many things we cannot show. The harmful impact on their emotional and mental wellbeing is not captured by visual means. The suffering is silenced, but it is there. I can see it in their eyes during engagement sessions, and hear it in their stories.
They feel disposable, of no value outside their productive input. But these workers are parents and partners who earn money so that their families can live, eat, and go to school. A worker whom I met recently spoke about the agony she felt when she left her two-year-old baby with her parents, so that she could come work on a Scottish farm. She was looking for legal advice because of the discriminatory treatment and humiliation she received at work, and she was unsure where to turn.
We tried to help her. Apart from providing emotional support, we gave her practical advice on rights, entitlements and possible ways to obtain representation. We assist many workers to navigate the complex legal system by referring them to pro-bono solicitors and helping them to prioritise their actions. Together we seek opportunities to make these people visible, their voices heard, and their presence valuable.
We would welcome more initiative from trade unions to work jointly towards our aim. We believe that our expertise and skills can help these organisations create effective channels for reaching marginalised workers and advancing their rights. It’s important that like-minded organisations work together towards common goals and actions. Siloes only slow us down.
The Worker Power project has already proved effective as a means of fostering representation among seasonal farm workers, and as an initiative for shifting attitudes toward seasonal workers. They are individuals and should be treated as such, not as a cheap foreign labour force.
The UK is a liberal and democratic country, and it is everyone’s responsibility to work towards a more just and inclusive society. There should be no selectivity in who can enjoy their human rights, and who are denied from it. Seasonal workers, regardless of where they are from, are no exception.
Explore the rest of the series
This series looks at how seasonal worker visas, which usually tie workers to their employers, are putting migrant workers around the world at risk of exploitation.
- Seasonal worker visas are tying migrants into exploitation
Caroline Robinson, Worker Support Centre - Exploitation embedded in Spain’s seasonal worker programme
Yoan Molinero-Gerbeau, Comillas Pontifical University - Migrant workers demand justice after abuse, exploitation in Canada
Amanda Aziz, Migrant Workers Centre - Seasonal worker visa puts migrants at risk on UK farms
Valeria Ragni, Worker Support Centre - Non-citizen workers still exploited in Israel, despite court ruling
Maayan Niezna, University of Liverpool - Israel is going backwards on protecting migrant workers
Aelad Cahana, Kav La'Oved - Did Brexit unleash new suffering on UK farms?
Margarita Permonaite, Worker Support Centre - Why I quit being a migrant farm worker in the UK
Jean-Pierre du Toit, seasonal migrant worker - The wage slaves of the Kafala system
Vani Saraswathi, migrant-rights.org
