If you’re not the customer, you are the product. This is the sentence that best sums up my three seasons working in the UK on the seasonal workers visa scheme. This year was undoubtably my last. I'm here to explain why and offer advice on how to improve the scheme.
It all happened very quickly the first time I applied to work in the UK. I got a WhatsApp message from a friend, sent an email, and within the hour I was filling out forms and signing documents. I never sent a CV to the South African agency that recruited me, and they never interviewed me. It's easy to see the red flags in retrospect. But at the time, the opportunity looked good on paper and I didn’t ask questions.
I paid extra to rush my visa appointment, and within a month of that first email I was off to the UK. My total outlay was about R40,000 (£1750), including the money I took to cover expenses until I got paid.
That’s a fair bit of money to pay back if you borrow it, like I did. It makes you feel a lot of pressure to succeed before you even step foot on British soil. Once you reach the farm and realise for the first time what you signed up for, it hits you like a brick to the head.
The penny drops
The living conditions are bad. On the bigger farms, six strangers might be made to share a one bathroom, three-bedroom static caravan. Be prepared for the absolute worst: mouldy curtains, clogged drains, mattresses that hurt your back more than the work, always waiting in line to cook or go to the toilet.
You’ll fight with your caravan-mates over space for your clothes in the shared cupboard. Once a week a bus will take you to Tesco, and you’ll fight again over space in the tiny bar fridge when you return. You get all this luxury for just under £70 a week, and in most cases gas and electricity are not included. £420 a week made per caravan, 600 caravans on some farms. Sounds like a lucrative accommodation business if you ask me.
They’ll tell you to hydrate. They won’t tell you to avoid hydrating so much that you need the toilet
Work isn’t better. You will know what crop you’ll be working on before you leave, but you probably won’t know what the work entails. No matter: a couple of videos and some documentation later and you’re considered trained. Be at the meeting point in the morning at 5am.
If you’re lucky that point is just a brief walk away from where you sleep, and from where you work. You could be riding a bus for up to two hours, unpaid, before work even begins if you’re not.
The videos won’t have reflected reality on the farm. They’ll be about the importance of PPE and food safety. But during the actual work you will be expected to use the same disposable gloves for a full day, for example, which will tear within two hours of work.
The videos might also tell you how important it is to stay hydrated when working under the sun. They won’t tell you to avoid hydrating so much that you need the toilet. Four toilets for 800 people that hardly ever get cleaned. You can imagine the conditions of those.
Soon enough you’re in the fields picking crops. This will be when you first learn about the “piece rate”. Piece rate is what determines everything for you as a worker. This ever-changing production quota is what is expected from you per hour.
Most of the time no one knows what this number is, but not reaching it has dire consequences. Being sent to the caravan after three hours of work, publicly called out to sign warnings, left off the work schedule, and eventually forced to request a transfer. Not exactly the minimum wage and minimum hours we signed up for when we took on debt and left our loved ones back home to come.
Where do you go when all your options are bad?
Requesting a transfer is a whole other nightmare on its own. Most of the time it isn’t your idea – you will be forced to request one by the farm you are working at. For some reason or another they won’t schedule you for work anymore, so it's either transfer or go home.
You log into your online work profile and request the transfer, an automated email comes through, and if you're lucky you’ll speak to a human within the next couple of days. By this point the farm is pressuring you to leave, so you are emailing the agents every day trying to get a transfer. It could take weeks before one finally comes through – weeks in which you have been surviving without getting paid.
The main lesson is that, without better oversight, these schemes cause a lot of pain
Getting that email about your transfer is one of your best days in the UK. You’re packed and ready to leave the moment it comes through, and you’re happy to be on your way even if it means four different busses and 14 hours in transit. But you don’t actually know where you’re about to end up.
Sometimes the conditions will be better than what you left behind. But if it's too good to be true, it usually is. Just as you start getting to target and everything seems good, something will probably happen. It might be the news that work will finish two months early, or something else. So you start again with the frantic emails and calls for help.
Sometimes there’s simply nothing you can do to save yourself. There are no other work options, and the agency can't get you a transfer. That’s why I'm writing this from Cape Town – my work time was cut short by a third of my visa allowance.
It really doesn’t have to be this way
I learned a lot over three years of work on the seasonal work scheme – so much that I’ve re-written this piece three times because it’s been so hard to decide what to say.
The main lesson is that, without better oversight, these schemes cause a lot of pain. I know of workers who have taken their own lives because of the pressure and the helplessness they felt out there.
People can't be expected to work in such harsh conditions and then recuperate in a living situation that is so inhumane. Contracts should not be cut short without compensation. Most importantly of all, we need somebody to directly contact when we need help on the farms. No more automated emails where it takes days to get responses. The UK wouldn’t produce food without us. To treat us like this is immoral.
Migration feeds the nation. Without the sacrifices made by farm workers on these schemes, the already crazy cost of living crisis would be completely out of control. We need to ask questions, and we need to have better support in place. Entering the country legally, contributing to the nation’s tax intake, and working the fields to maintain the UK’s food security should not leave us helpless and in debt.
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
