Gangmaster is stripped of its licence

A gangmaster company in Cornwall has lost its licence over a failure to pay its workers for more than a month.

Forty Bulgarian workers employed by Baltic Work Team Ltd were left to scavenge for the potatoes and courgettes they had been employed to pick, after going for 35 days without pay. The company had already had its licence revoked once by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) but had been allowed to carry on following an appeal.

Set up following the deaths of 23 Chinese workers in Morecambe Bay three years ago, the GLA began operating on 6 April 2006. It currently licenses gangmasters who supply workers to the agriculture, horticulture and fish-processing industries; unions want it to cover more areas of food production and the construction sector (see "Gangmaster licensing must be extended now" elsewhere in this issue).

The GLA’s chair, Paul Whitehouse, said the immediate revocation of a licence was a serious decision, taken only when there was “significant non-compliance”.

Praising the GLA for its swift action in this “shocking case of abuse”, TUC deputy general secretary Frances O’Grady noted that Baltic Work Team also claims to provide labour to the construction sector.

“The Health and Safety Executive and HM Revenue and Customs should now investigate whether they are breaching employment laws in other sectors,” she said. “This case brings home the loophole that allows rogue agencies to work in sectors other than the few covered by the GLA without supervision or licensing.”