“[Do we need] to put up with being treated like slaves?” asks a worker on a farm in Scotland.
“We are slaves,” writes another.
We often hear comments like this at the Worker Support Centre (WSC), an NGO supporting marginalised and isolated workers in labour sectors with a high risk of exploitation in Scotland. Most of the people we support work in seasonal agriculture on isolated farms.
Many of them come to us with stories of strict and unrealistic picking targets, uninhabitable accommodation, undignified treatment and unfair threats of dismissal – none of which they expected when they signed up to work in one of the largest economies in the world.
This year, we’ve received more daily contacts for assistance from seasonal farm workers than at any other point in the history of our service.
Many of the issues experienced by people on farms in Scotland arise from the way in which the UK’s seasonal worker visa was designed. The key features of the visa, including rules that stop workers changing employers and gaps in rules about accommodation oversight and standards, have created a fertile environment for exploitation.
The Employment Rights Bill, currently making its way through the UK parliament, is not in its current form suitable for tackling the myriad risks to workers on this visa. Much more work needs to be done to achieve that, including ensuring workers’ rights are protected during their time in the UK and that state enforcement is up to the job of enforcing those rights.
The people we support in Scotland have made long journeys, and they work hard to put food on the UK’s tables. They deserve better protections while they do so.
Exploitation is written into the visa
In 2019, the seasonal worker pilot was introduced to tackle reported labour shortages in seasonal agriculture in the UK. The pilot led to the establishment of the seasonal worker visa, valid for six months in horticulture (including fruit, vegetable and flower farms) and 2.5 months in poultry. Workers are sponsored by a licensed scheme operator and employed by a farm.
Similar to workers on other types of restrictive visas, migrant workers on the seasonal worker visa are tied to a single visa sponsor, heavily restricting worker movement. They have no recourse to public funds and very limited access to union support.
The workers are often geographically isolated and socially marginalised. This makes them dependent on their employer not only for their job security, but also for essential needs such as housing, transport, food and access to medical care.
Poor working and living conditions are having a huge physical and mental health toll on the individuals who travel to work on Scotland’s farms
WSC conducts intensive outreach across north-east Scotland, where most farms are located. We have a deep understanding of the geography, workers’ needs, and the locations they access in their sporadic interactions with the outside world. We’re also led by staff with lived experience of the issues experienced by workers on restrictive visas, which shapes our services, strategy and oversight. All this enables us to reach out and stand in solidarity with workers who would otherwise never come into contact with an independent support service.
Meetings with workers last summer highlighted the huge physical and mental health toll that poor working and living conditions have on Scotland’s seasonal workers.
In our mid-year report, we identified three major issues workers face that are a direct result of the visa’s design. These are dismissal-related issues, substandard housing conditions and barriers to changing employer.
Dismissals: a disposable workforce
The UK seasonal worker visa is only valid for six months. This means that workers are not covered by many dismissal rights, since these generally only apply after two years of continuous employment. This is despite many workers returning to Scottish farms year after year.
If dismissed, workers are required to return to their home countries unless the scheme operator offers to transfer them to another farm. Visa rules don’t allow them to independently look for work on another farm, or to seek out work in a different sector.
Threats of dismissal are common. Workers told us they live in fear of being dismissed, since for many it would mean being unable to repay debts incurred to come to the UK or losing the opportunity to return the following season. This summer, WSC supported a high number of workers who were dismissed or threatened with dismissal for not meeting productivity targets. Some had only been in the UK for a few weeks.
Employers often use dismissal threats to get workers to compete with each other to reach what some say are unobtainable targets. Workers said this makes them constantly anxious about losing their livelihoods. They also told us this makes them feel deceived. Many said they were not made aware of picking targets before they left for the UK, and were only told they’d be working a minimum of 32 hours a week paid at the national minimum wage.
Most workers just opt to keep their heads down and continue enduring abusive conditions – because the price of speaking up is too high
Many workers reported being penalised for not having picked enough. Penalties imposed by their employers include cutting their workday short, which limited their earnings, and issuing warning letters. Successive warnings can trigger dismissal.
Worryingly, WSC also saw workers dismissed after a complaint was raised, with some accused by their employers of gross misconduct or even forced to resign. Workers dismissed for low productivity or misconduct are unlikely to be invited back to the UK the following year.
Our data also highlights the lack of representation during dismissal procedures. None of the workers we supported had been offered representation, and many also reported a lack of clear process, no independent interpreting, and no opportunity to have their voices heard.
Workers who raised dismissal issues had often been placed in farms where other issues had been reported, such as poor treatment by field supervisors, unsafe or insufficient equipment, wage theft, and poor housing. Yet there’s little to no redress for workers put in these situations, and employers undoubtedly hold the balance of power. Most workers just opt to keep their heads down and continue enduring abusive conditions – because the price of speaking up is too high.
Substandard housing conditions
After toiling in the fields for hours each day, exposed to the harsh British weather, many workers must return to poorly maintained accommodation.
The caravans or metal cabins housing workers on Scottish farms are often riddled with damp, black mould, draughty holes, faulty heating and broken and stained furniture. Most contain extremely small rooms, and many workers are expected to share bedrooms with strangers.
This accommodation is not only poor. It is also expensive. For someone working the minimum guaranteed 32 hours per week at national minimum wage, accommodation charges can claim nearly 20% of their net pay. But, because of the constraints of the seasonal worker visa, workers have little choice but to accept their substandard accommodation and the money it costs.
Workers report being told that if they don’t like the conditions, they can go home
There’s little workers or advocates can do about this. Due to gaps in legislation, identified by the WSC and exposed in an ITV investigation, seasonal worker temporary accommodation falls outside standards and enforcement regimes. Legally speaking, it’s unclear whether workers are tenants or occupiers, and thus it is also unclear whose responsibility it is to ensure accommodation is habitable and safe. And the result is that there no realistic way to seek redress for unsafe housing.
Workers report that, if they raise issues on the farm or complain about the living conditions, they are simply told that if they don’t like it, they can go home. From here the situation can quickly deteriorate. We found that, in many cases of dismissal, workers are asked to leave their accommodation within three days. This short-notice eviction puts anyone dismissed at extreme risk of homelessness, because they do not have access to government-supported housing or benefits. All because of the way the seasonal worker visa is designed.
Workers trapped in risky employment
People on the seasonal worker visa do not have the right to choose their place of employment. They are not allowed to terminate their contract and move to another place of employment, even when the conditions on their farm are abusive.
The only way to leave poor employment conditions is to request a transfer through the scheme operator and get permission to leave the farm. Outside of that pathway, any attempt to leave could result in the worker becoming undocumented and at risk of potentially greater exploitation.
These conditions create a concerning power inequality between worker and employer.
Many of the workers we supported to request a transfer were refused by their scheme operator, despite them raising concerning welfare issues. Other workers told us that they were not aware of how to request a transfer, or said they received no response from their scheme operator after submitting a request.
Scheme operators who do respond with a refusal often cite a lack of alternative available employment, or raise doubts about the concerns of the workers. The visa’s structure also limits the options that scheme operators can offer, since workers can only be transferred between farms the operators have contracts with. So even if they find the worker’s claims credible, their hands are – to an extent – also tied.
Workers deserve changes now
The Home Office has written extremely restrictive immigration conditions into the seasonal worker visa. Without a doubt, these conditions have created a permissive environment for exploitation, kept far away from the public eye.
Workers are left inherently vulnerable to exploitation because of the limited rights afforded to them by the visa scheme. And whether they end up in a good or poor performing farm, these structural issues remain.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are many short and long-term changes that would improve conditions and reduce the risk of exploitation.
Our mid-year report has a list of policy recommendations for the short-term, such as ensuring the forthcoming Employment Bill guarantees basic individual rights to people on the seasonal worker visa and all other temporary workers.
These rights include protections against unfair dismissal, new housing standards, improved enforcement and the establishment of an independent, centrally managed transfer pathway for workers. A pathway that is entirely separate to both the visa sponsor and the employer.
In the long-term, key changes should include the introduction of an open work visa that enables workers to change employer and employment type and facilitates a pathway to settlement. We also recommend the introduction of a safeguarding visa that enables migrant workers whose rights have been breached to stay and work in the UK while they pursue complaints. Finally, we want to see better protections for workers who report workplace exploitation, and comprehensive access to independent worker support.
These measures would go a long way towards reducing exploitation on farms in Scotland.
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
