NFU Scotland is calling for abolition of the Scottish
Agricultural Wages Board (SAWB) and for agricultural workers' pay and
conditions to be determined under general employment law. Much of the media is
reporting the position of the National Farmers Union (an employers’ association
and not to be confused with a genuine employees union). UNITE is the union
representing the interests of agricultural workers. It has told the Scottish
government that compromising the powers of the Scottish Agricultural Wages
Board (SAWB) would start a race to the bottom on workers’ wages, rights and
safety across the rural economy.
Scottish agricultural workers are not directly comparable to
other workers in Scottish industry. Whilst other sizable groups can enter into
collective bargaining agreements on a workplace or individual company basis,
farm workers cannot, in the vast majority of cases, meet the threshold for
statutory trade union recognition rights. Previous statics have illustrated
that of the 6,632 holdings in Scotland employing full-time employees, only 176
employ seven or more workers.
The success of the SAWB can be seen in relation to an employer
who forced mainly migrant workers to work 39 hours over 4 days under one contract
of employment and a further 39 hours over 3 days on another. Using different employer
names for each contract, this employer was not only breaching the wages order
but also the Working Time Regulations. These workers were not paid for the overtime
they had clearly worked; they only ever received plain time, and not at the minimum
amount set by the board, nor even the national minimum wage. The workers had to
pay for compulsory transport to work when the company moved them to another
site in an attempt to avoid paying the “over 26 weeks” SAWB rate. They were
also forced to continue working into late evening as the compulsory use of company
transport meant having to wait until that transport was available. The SAWB and
its inspectorate put an end to this blatant exploitation – but without a strong
SAWB, such examples could arise again.
The Scottish Government has itself previously stated the following:
“we are not aware of any other body in Scotland that would monitor the employment
of foreign labour through agencies.' In 2012 Scotland accounted for the third
highest proportion of workers in the UK on the seasonal agricultural workers
scheme. There is also evidence that much of the seasonal labour supply into
horticulture is informal or irregular. A report by the Scottish Government
(2009) entitled The Experience of Rural Poverty stated that the nature of
employment in rural areas (seasonal, agricultural) means that 'many migrant
workers' face unemployment and, in some cases, homelessness at certain times of
the year. The obstacles that exist for rural workers in general are aggravated
for migrant workers due to language difficulties, lack of information on and awareness
of employment rights, indebtedness to agencies or traffickers, and physical and
social isolation.
In October 2013, as part of the deregulatory and austerity
agenda pursued by the Conservative-led UK Government, the Agricultural Wages
Board, after more than 60 years of pay protection for 140,000 agricultural
workers, was abolished in England. The UK Government’s own figures estimate that
farm workers will lose more than £258 million over 10 years in lost pay, sick
pay and holiday entitlement. As a consequence, millions of pounds will be taken
away from rural families, communities, shops, businesses, and services. There
is also concern that supermarkets – when they know farm businesses are paying
less in wages - will drop the prices that they are prepared to pay for
agricultural produce, detrimentally affecting employers as well as employees.
A key problem now occurring, as predicted by the current
Cabinet Secretary, is that individual workers are having to negotiate face to face
with their employer on pay. In a survey by Unite, the vast majority of farming
employers in England and Wales - some 75% – did not want to be charged with
undertaking wage bargaining. They are heavily dependent on their employees and
do not want the tension that comes with imposing wage deals. Many farmers
valued the AWB mechanism for setting clear and straightforward rates of pay and
conditions and are now very concerned about the prospect of having to negotiate
with the workers they depend on.
United We Bargain - Divided We Beg
