Give us a break, say labour providers

Companies supplying the agricultural and food sector with temporary workers are being unfairly targeted by government rules and enforcers, according to the Association of Labour Providers (ALP), which represents them.

The ALP wants to see more consistency in the rules that apply to suppliers of such workers and more even-handed treatment by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), which polices them. The GLA was set up in the wake of the 2004 Morecambe Bay tragedy in which 21 illegally employed Chinese cockle pickers drowned.

The ALP has called on the government to repeal separate arrangements for the Agricultural Minimum Wage, claiming that the National Minimum Wage already provided the necessary protection for workers. It also wants the Worker Registration scheme to be repealed, “a scheme introduced purely to appease the media”, said ALP chairman Mark Boleat.

While he was supportive of the GLA’s role in pursuing labour providers that flouted the law, Boleat was critical of the way it focused on businesses rather than the individuals who ran them. He also described government plans to merge the GLA into the Health and Safety Executive as a “nonsense”

“The GLA needs to be more effective at dealing with the individuals involved in malpractice and should see the companies with which they work as vehicles for that malpractice,” said Boleat.

He said restricting the GLA’s remit to the food and agriculture market meant that many other sectors that exploited their workers - employing both direct and temporary labour - were not equally policed.

“We want the GLA to pursue serious malpractice, not technical breaches of regulations or deficiencies in paperwork,” said Boleat. “The GLA needs to deal more effectively with labour users and their customers and I don’t just mean the supermarkets but the whole of the food industry.”