Cymraeg What’s the issue?
Did you know that the UK relies on 58,000 seasonal workers to harvest the crops grown by our current domestic agricultural system? The majority of these are migrant workers who come to the UK on the Government’s post-Brexit Seasonal Worker Visa scheme. Migrant seasonal workers across the globe are often at the sharpest edge of exploitation by the global corporate food system, enduring long hours, low wages, mistreatment by supervisors and employers, hostile migration systems, and poor housing.
What are we doing?
The Landworkers’ Alliance, in partnership with the New Economics Foundation, Focus on Labour Exploitation, Sustain, and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, has coordinated an investigation into working conditions on British farms for seasonal workers, in order to help support campaigns for their unionisation.
Our investigation has culminated in the publication of our report Debt, Migration and Exploitation: The Seasonal Worker Visa and the Degradation of Working Conditions in UK Horticulture which you can read here.
In November 2023 Landworkers’ Alliance joined the newly formulated Seasonal Workers Interest Group to help secure immediate improvements to the Seasonal Worker Visa Scheme, and to advocate for the interests of migrant seasonal workers in the UK. You can read more about the group here.
As well as leading on this UK-based project, our Migrant Solidarity Campaign Coordinator Catherine McAndrew is also active in the European Coordination of Via Campesina’s (ECVC) Migrant & Rural Workers working group, which coordinates with, and provides support for agricultural workers’ unions which represent workers in the international supply chain.
What can you do?
For an introduction to some of the new issues facing migrant agricultural workers in the UK, we highly recommend reading this report from Focus on Labour Exploitation. For an investigation into the drivers of poor working conditions in a European context, you can find check out this 2019 ECVC report. For news from the ECVC Migrant & Rural Workers Group, see its latest bulletin here.
For more info, or to get involved with our migrant workers solidarity campaign, please email the project coordinator Catherine McAndrew at catherine.mcandrew@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk
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