The conversation (full transcript)
Gabbi: Caroline, perhaps you could start by telling me about seasonal workers in the UK. What is a seasonal worker, and more specifically, what is a seasonal migrant worker?
Caroline: Seasonal workers have been part of our agricultural system for as long as anyone can remember. Their core role is to pick fruit and vegetables at the peak points of the agricultural seasons, and the seasonal worker visa essentially replaces a scheme we had since the end of the Second World War called the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme.
The current seasonal worker visa was introduced in 2019, in response to concerns about labour shortages in agriculture. Part of what drove those shortages was that fewer workers were coming from within the EU – not just because of Brexit, but because economic conditions in countries like Poland had improved, making work at home more attractive. What we see now is that many of the workers we support come from Central Asian countries, and for them the alternative to coming to the UK for work has previously been migration to Russia. With very few other options available now, the UK scheme has significant pull.
At the Worker Support Centre, we exist to prevent labour exploitation and promote decent work. We target our support according to the risks we identify – in supply chains, in workplaces, and in the immigration system. The seasonal worker visa is central to our focus because workers on this visa are often in isolated, high-risk environments. The work itself carries serious risks: injuries, fatalities, exposure to chemicals and equipment. And the sheer number of nationalities involved creates additional complexity – there’s no English language requirement on the visa, and around 90 to 95% of the workers we support have limited or no English at all. Something as practical as a complaints form for a labour enforcement body now needs to be available in a whole range of languages – and those languages can change from year to year.
Some of the things that make workers angriest are not always the most obvious ones. Being referred to by a number rather than a name. Being told by a supervisor to use the toilet in a nearby bush and get back to work, because there are no facilities near the fields. Workers talk about those moments as simply not feeling treated like a human being. They also raise health and safety concerns – if you’re picking fruit that people are going to eat, but you have no access to handwashing facilities, that’s a problem that goes beyond dignity.
Gabbi: What happens when workers want to change their situation?
Caroline: Workers might try to change the conditions they’re facing on a farm, and we might support them to do that. But if conditions can’t be changed – if they’re being poorly treated, not paid for all the hours they’re working, or living in unsafe accommodation – they may try to move to a different place of employment.
The problem is that the visa ties workers to their scheme operator. If that operator has no alternative placements available, the worker is stuck. And if they’ve taken on significant debt to get here — paying legal recruitment costs, and in some cases illegal ones too – returning home isn’t a viable option either. That combination of visa restriction and debt can effectively trap a worker, and that creates real and serious risks of exploitation.
What’s important to understand is that workers themselves are the experts on what they need and what’s working. On farms where workers feel respected – where they feel treated as colleagues rather than units of labour – they’re much more likely to speak up when something is wrong. That matters for safety, and it matters for their mental health.
The HSE has identified these workplaces as some of the highest risk across Great Britain. Workers – often new to the job, new to the country – can face hazards from equipment and chemicals that, when things go wrong, go very wrong. We urge employers to take training seriously, to provide adequate protective equipment, and to ensure workers are only doing tasks they’re trained for. Critically, employers should support workers to access independent advice and trusted organisations – and they should see that not as a threat, but as part of building an industry that works well.
Gabbi: What would you like to see change?
Caroline: We’re part of a group called the Seasonal Worker Interest Group – organisations that work directly with, or on behalf of, workers on the seasonal worker visa. Together we’ve developed a range of proposals for how the scheme could be improved.
The primary ask is straightforward: the scheme needs to be formally reviewed, with risks to workers – including risks of modern slavery – explicitly included in scope. That was actually a commitment made by the previous government when it introduced the pilot in 2019. It hasn’t happened. In the meantime, the scheme has grown enormously. A review is overdue, and there are aspects of it that are particularly relevant to the current government right now.
When you look seriously at the risks, there’s a lot that could be addressed. That’s where we need to start.
