In what looks like bad news for agency workers on farms, Defra is looking at ways to reduce the powers of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, which exists to prevent the worst abuses of casual farm workers and construction workers.
This is part of the ConDems’ recently-announced plans to weaken a variety of environmental and other protective laws.
Here is a video by climate change activists and Trade Union members protesting with song and dance against supermarkets stocking vegetables from ThanetEarth, which employs a lot of agency workers on zero hours contracts etc with all the lack of employees’ rights that goes along with agency work.
Is that the Gangmasters Licensing Authority who went public giving Thanet Earth a clean bill of health? The Gangmasters Authority that regularly proudly announces it arrested illegal immigrants and handed them over to the immigration authority? The Gangmasters Authority whose board members take back handers from the very gangmasters it is investigating and prosecuting?
Good riddance, I say!