Seasonal workers

A new Landworkers Alliance union report on debt, migration and exploitation, adds to a mounting body of evidence about the poor treatment of migrant workers recruited via the seasonal worker visa scheme.

This was introduced in 2019 to alleviate post-Brexit labour shortages. The government estimates that between 50,000 and 60,000 seasonal workers are needed annually to bring in the wider harvest across the UK. They are almost entirely recruited from outside the UK.

The new report “lays bare the legal and economic structures that facilitate the exploitation of farmworkers by the industrial food system”.