The Journey to Licensing

ETI Experimental Projects - TLWG Report

The experience of implementing a voluntary code of practice in the UK agricultural industry (2004-2006)

Introduction

Initiation of the Temporary Labour Working Group

The Ethical Trading Initiative convened a Working Group to address labour conditions for seasonal and foreign labour in the UK Food Industry in September 2002, in response to reports of abuse of workers. Its aim was to establish a set of minimum standards for labour providers that could be enforced through new statutory controls. Partly as a result of the Group’s lobbying activities a Private Member’s Bill was enacted in July 2004 as the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act. This laid the foundations for a licensing and registration scheme which came into force in April 2006.

The deaths of 23 migrant cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in February 2004 threw a public spotlight on an issue that has concerned the industry and government for over a decade. Farming and the food industry have always been reliant on temporary labour to manage seasonal peaks in production. This trend has intensified with the demands of 24-hour retailing. The traditional ‘gangmaster’system - where gangmasters ran gangs of workers and supplied them to farmers at harvest time - had developed into a largely unregulated sector with an increasing number of foreign workers. Anecdotal evidence suggested that, whilst there were a number of unscrupulous operators, there were also a large number of labour providers who lacked the management skills and information to run an employment business and meet all the legal obligations to their employees, in terms of pay, conditions, working hours and safety. Those gangmasters who did meet their legal obligations found that they were continually losing business by being undercut by those who did not.

Whilst this situation was evidently an issue for workers, it rapidly became clear that a broad coalition of different interests in the food industry were keen to tackle this problem. The Temporary Labour Working Group (TLWG) took a multi-stakeholder approach to tackling this issue.

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The journey to licensing - The experience of implementing a voluntary code of practice in the UK agricultural industry (2004-2006), February 2007 [PDF, 167kb]