by Keith Richmond
Kay Wareing, Oxfam’s director of UK poverty, has called on the Government to extend legislation to curb abuse by gangmasters in areas where workers have little or no protection. She was speaking at the launch of a hard-hitting new report, issued five years after the tragic deaths of 23 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay, which reveals that workers employed by gangmasters are some of the most vulnerable and exploited in Britain.
The report, called Turning the Tide, concludes: “To protect all vulnerable workers employed through gangmasters, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s remit must immediately be extended to the sectors of construction, hospitality and social care currently not regulated by the GLA. In the longer term, one single enforcement agency should be created to be responsible for regulating all agency labour across every industry in the UK.”
The report, produced for Oxfam by the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at Hull University, says the GLA has reduced exploitation and raised labour rights standards. However, it warns: “A significant number of unlicensed gangmasters still exist and the GLA’s efforts to reduce exploitation are fundamentally thwarted by workers’ fear of blowing the whistle during a recession.
“Gangmasters have diversified into sectors beyond the reach of the GLA where there is less regulation of labour standards. Exploitation in the sectors of construction, hospitality and care was found to be endemic.”
One worker – Teresa from Poland, working in Cornwall – said: “We were encouraged to come to the UK with the kids by the gangmaster. They said there was a lot of work for us. They encouraged us to borrow money from them at the start for air fares etc. Then they were taking deductions from our wages to cover the debt, but we never knew how much they lent us and how much we still owed, as there was no paperwork. We were left with very little each week after deductions. One week, we only had a pound to live on and it was very hard to keep going.
“The children felt it as well. They used to go to school without any lunch, as we had no money to buy them anything. The agency promised we would have a house to ourselves but there were 13 adults and three children in five bedrooms. The house was in a very poor condition with mould and damp everywhere. And for one room where four of us were living, we were paying £100 a week.”
