The GLAA’s remit includes ensuring workers receive a minimum wage, adequate accommodation, safe transport, proper contracts and decent working conditions. The Morecambe Bay tragedy in 2004, in which 23 Chinese cockle-pickers drowned while harvesting the shellfish, prompted the creation of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which became the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) in 2017, to combat labour abuses. The findings have raised concerns that conditions for foreign workers in the UK’s agricultural sector have not improved in recent years, despite commitments to crackdown on exploitative conditions.Ī Scottish government-funded review last year also found seasonal workers reporting degrading and unsafe living conditions, as well as poor health and safety practices. In the survey, 15% of respondents said their accommodation was neither safe, comfortable, hygienic nor warm, and 10% said their accommodation had no bathroom, no running water and no kitchen. Recruitment presentations to potential applicants for the pilot scheme were sometimes found not to have accurately reflected the accommodation, which was mostly on the farms. Most of the 2,481 workers who came to the UK under the scheme were employed picking soft fruits, almost entirely on farms in England and Scotland.Ī UK government survey of workers found that workers had not been given employment contracts in their native language had not been provided health and safety equipment, as they had been promised and were legally required to do and that they had been subjected to unfair treatment by farm managers, including racism, discrimination and mistreatment, allegedly on the grounds of workers’ nationality.

The UK launched the seasonal workers pilot scheme in 2019 after concerns about a shortage of labour for harvesting jobs on farms on leaving the EU.

Nhl 2004 rebuilt control scheme