“Are we human” The Struggle of Seasonal Farmworkers in the UK
Article: Clark McAllister. Illustration: Rory Robertson-Shaw
Walk into a typical supermarket, and you are immediately greeted by fresh produce. If you examine the punnets of fruit and the packets of vegetables, you will likely see they are covered with prints of British flags. You might find 'Red Tractor' logos and artful motifs, the county of origin of the produce, and even the name of the farmer who produced the crops. These things, printed on the labels, tell us a story, suggesting our food is 'local', that it is produced 'ethically', and that our food system is based on 'fair trade' and 'human rights'. Yet, at a recent protest organised by migrant farmworkers, a series of uncomfortable, confronting questions were posed by the workers who pick these commodities – 'Are we human? Are we persons? Or is it because we come from under-developed countries that we don't have rights?' Examining punnets of fruit inside the supermarket, we don't see the profoundly global dynamics necessary for these crops to exist, and central amongst these is the migration of tens of thousands of seasonal, low-paid workers, continuously subjected to extreme conditions in the UK countryside.
The exploitative nature of seasonal agricultural labour has been increasingly highlighted by workers, researchers, and investigative organisations since the creation of the Seasonal Worker Visa in 2019. This strict labour control mechanism ties migrant workers to specific workplaces for the limited six-month duration of their visa. Alongside harsh physical working conditions (with workers usually living on-site, inside the workplace), isolation in the countryside, increasing reports of debt to cover travel costs and recruitment fees, and frequent reports of bullying and intimidation from abusive supervisors – workers are also tied to specific recruitment companies that sponsor their visas. Workers have to make special requests to these agencies to transfer farms, who often refuse, leaving them involuntarily tied to single farms.
I have my own direct experience of these issues. Working in the sector over the 2022 harvest season, I witnessed my migrant co-workers being humiliated and degraded by bullying managers, screamed at and threatened while being pressured to work faster, and consistently denied work as punishment for failing to meet high piece-work rates. Many of my coworkers, from Nepal, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan, also paid exorbitant and illegal recruitment fees to third-party brokers controlling the employment process in their home countries. Accumulating significant debts, many of these workers laboured all season – far from home, inside sun-cooked polyethene tunnels – to minimise the financial losses incurred in taking the job rather than earning and saving money.
To say these forms of exploitation are common in the agricultural sector is an understatement. They are a pervasive reality, running through our food system like a slew of acrid slurry. A wealth of sources and testimonies exist for those curious to investigate the situation themselves. What, then, is being done? Rather than appealing to a government and a system that has made it clear it does not care about migrants, let's instead look at what the workers are doing.
Worker Resistance
In recent years, we have witnessed explosive protests by farmers across Europe, signalling a foreboding future of rural struggle oriented towards nationalist and anti-ecological politics. Now, we are beginning to witness workers' struggles: struggles too often confined and easily overlooked in the countryside. On 24 January, a demonstration led by former seasonal farmworkers took place in London, outside the UK Home Office. Supported by Libera, United Voices of the World, and The Landworkers' Alliance, the workers' message was clear: exploitation is not limited to the workplace but is ingrained in a migration system that gives some people more rights than others.
What started as a wildcat strike in the fields of Herefordshire in September 2023 – where nearly 90 workers demanded 'yes to decent work, no to modern slavery' – the resistance of seasonal farmworkers has shed light on issues plaguing migrants across Britain. Speaking at a seminar after the demonstration, a group of former farmworkers emphasised that it was not only poor working conditions that prompted them to strike but also the costs of travel, low earnings, and the pressure of falling into debt. Struggles around working conditions in the countryside ultimately overlap with struggles around residency, homelessness, and migration status, owing to the arrangement of work in our agricultural sector. As Eliza, one of these workers, explained:
'We left the farm and came to London with some co-workers. We slept the first night in the airport. We didn't know London, in the first week we were in the street. We had to ask for food… I found accommodation for two nights, my son had to leave with other male workers for the streets.'
Existing in legal limbo, many seasonal farmworkers are forced into Britain's grey economy. It is important to emphasise that this is often directly the consequence of the arrangement of work on farms, with workers frequently dismissed or laid off for seasonal or productivity reasons. Ultimately, workers are left without secure employment in the only sector their visa enables them to work in legally.
When the most vulnerable and precarious workers strike back against a system designed to keep us all in our place, it is vital that trade unions and campaign groups heed their call and join forces to destroy the invisible – but no less real – apartheid walls that separate us. Reactionary, fascistic politics of deportation and immigration control increasingly plague our world. Therefore, solidarity must extend to those facing extreme vulnerability and exploitation. These issues will only become more important as our social worlds spiral around the political forces of the far-right and the physical reality of climate catastrophe. As division and cynicism become normalised, it is our political duty, as progressive human beings, to unite with one another against exploitation in all its forms.
Clark McAllister is an Editor at Notes From Below and a researcher working on the food system.
Your £3/month subscription is used to print 30 copies per issue, worth £90 for our vendors. We went from 1000 copies per issue in 2018 to roughly 35,000 per issue in 2024. The only thing stopping us doing more is money. With your support we can go even further. Help us print and distribute more copies for free to anyone who wants to sell it by becoming a monthly subscriber.