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Did Brexit unleash new suffering on UK farms? [1]
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Date: 2025-01
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?
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/did-brexit-unleash-new-suffering-on-uk-farms/
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