THE REPORT ‘Forced Labour and Migration to the UK’ examined four industries in depth to uncover the extent of forced labour in Britain.

These were construction, agriculture/horticulture, contract cleaning and residential care.

All four industries share common characteristics; they are tied to one particular area – that is they cannot be moved about in search of cheap labour, the labour has to come to them; they are areas that require low skill work but work that is high risk in terms of physical labour and safety; they are extremely competitive industries where wage costs are extremely high in proportion to total costs; and the seasonal and casual nature of the work involved.

These are also industries that have suffered a great deal from the Thatcher policy of de-regulation, privatisation and contracting-out, policies vastly extended by the present Labour government.

All these factors create conditions in which the super-exploitation of migrant workers through forced labour schemes can and does flourish.

The report quotes from an outfit called the Overseas Human Resources Bureau Limited, a recruitment agency that specialises in providing staff in the medical and construction industries, which advertises its Romanian construction workers in this way:

‘The workers are available to work 10 hours per day, 6 days per week, which ensures completion of projects on time, and in many instances ahead of schedule….OHR Bureau believes it’s (sic) services are an invaluable aid to contractors, not only providing the means to reverse the skilled manpower shortage within the industry, but also to bring their present excessive labour rates to a more acceptable commercial level.’ (p27)

Sub-contracting is central to the whole issue of forced labour, the report states:

‘Migrants often find themselves at the end of long sub-contracting chains, with different intermediaries needing to make a profit margin on their labour – not just the end employer, but the employment agency and the gangmaster. How different people take their cut varies widely.’ (p 31)

The Employment Agencies Act of 1973 makes it illegal for agencies to charge workers for finding them jobs but research by the TUC has established that it is common for such illegal charges to be levied and undocumented workers are particularly vulnerable to this form of exploitation.

Sub-contracting of labour have focused mainly on the activities of the gangmaster, a form of sub-contracting labour which, the report states, is ‘predominant in certain parts of the country, notably the Spalding-Boston area of Lincolnshire.’

Such is the profit to be made that the report claims ‘mafia-like networks’ have become involved.

Sub-contracting in the food manufacturing sector is particularly penetrated by the gangmasters to the extent that any gangmaster willing to pay minimum wages to their workers find themselves priced out of business.

One gangmaster insider is quoted in the report:

‘It’s actually very difficult to be a legal gangmaster. If there are a sufficient number that are illegal they’re bringing the price down. The packhouse (to which the gangmaster is supplying labour) may have ethical standards, but they also have people charged with making a profit on a particular unit.’ (p 32)

As the report notes, to be successful the gangmaster needs workers who are willing to work at a moment’s notice in exhausting and dangerous conditions and be able to adapt between short and extremely long working days.

It goes on that the workers must be ‘compliant with employer demands: any refusal would risk suppliers failing to fulfil the supermarkets’ orders and cannot be tolerated.’ (p 32)

So the trail that starts in a frozen piece of agricultural land somewhere in East Anglia, with migrant workers, who may very well be held in debt slavery, suffer illegal stoppages from their wages and most probably be paid below the legal minimum wage, ends up in your local friendly supermarket.

As the report points out: ‘This proliferation of sub-contracting creates a grey area, where the formal and informal economies and networks mesh and labour exploitation can emerge and prosper.

‘Long sub-contracting chains can result in serious ambiguities in the employment relationship. For example, it is often not at all clear who is the real employer and where responsibility lies for the employment conditions and basic health and safety provisions.

‘In some instances, the agency merely supplies workers for direct employment by the employer, while in others the workers are employed by the agency – or by a sub-contractor.

‘Such confusion makes for a grey area, where reputable employers and end-of-chain agents can throw up their hands at ‘irresponsible elements’ who ‘fool them’ into accepting workers whose status is irregular, or who are otherwise abusing their labour.’ (p 32)

This kind of exploitation is not confined to agriculture, as the report makes clear contract cleaning is another fertile ground for abusive labour relations.

One scam that they report is the non-payment of cleaners.

The way it works is that an agency insists that their cleaning supervisor recruits all the cleaners her agency hires.

The new employees are promised pay once they have signed a contract but the agency knows that the employee does not have the necessary paperwork permitting them to work legally.

‘The workers start the job and by the time they’ve discovered that they can’t produce the documentation they may have worked for several weeks with no pay.’ (p 34)

Another lowly paid sector is that of care assistants and nurses working in residential homes for the elderly or the disabled.

Because of the tendency for ‘living-in’ to cover the 24 hour responsibilities of the job, workers in this sector are not just lowly paid but also particularly vulnerable to abuse.

If they lose their jobs they lose their accommodation, they can also be extremely isolated from the external world with their entire lives regulated by the manager or owner of the home.

The report cites an instance it uncovered of one woman whose ‘food intake was controlled, she was not allowed to cook and was subjected to constant racism. Her contact with life outside was severely restricted.’ (p34)

The report also uncovered another form of exploitation concerning nurses:

‘Both private and NHS trusts may obtain work permits to employ nurses, but nurses who have received their training abroad are usually subject to a probationary period to ‘upgrade’ on the job, during which they are paid as care assistants.

‘Once they have completed this ‘adaptation’, which is supposed to last between three and six months, they can register with the Nursing and Midwifery Council and have the right to practice as nurses, and be paid on the nursing pay scale.

‘While the home is responsible for declaring that the nurse has completed the adaptation and is competent to practice, there is an obvious financial incentive for the home to delay registration continuing to pay on the lower scale……

‘Nurses in this situation feel unable to complain, as they absolutely need the registration. This is not least because they may have to repay debts taken to come to the UK.’ (p 34)

This report shows conclusively that even those workers who have permits to work are finding themselves in a position where they cannot exert even the limited employment rights on offer, for those without permission.
Working illegally means a life of constant threat, threats of violence, threats of deportation etc. are all weapons in the arsenal of abuse they face.

The report includes numerous interviews with migrant workers which sets out the violence and abuse they face daily.

Violence and intimidation, the report explains, has several aims; to force a migrant to work, to stop them from seeking help and to assert control over them.

The case of two Polish construction workers illustrates how violence is used to force people to work.

These workers were brought to the UK by agents who told them they would be provided with housing and a job and that they could pay the agent at a later date.

Once in the UK they were moved all over the country to work for long hours under close supervision, they received no pay.

When they attempted to run away they were badly beaten.

In the case of violence used to prevent complaints, the authors of the report cite information from the Citizens Advice Bureaux who dealt with migrant workers complaints and who strongly suspect that violence was threatened against even those with a legal right to work, to make them drop complaints they had made to CAB staff.

Violence, threats relating to immigration status and intimidation are very common according to the report and they cite numerous examples in support of this.

A representative case involved three migrants with legal permits who went to work for a manufacturing company.

They were threatened with violence to force them to accept a 12 hour shift from Monday to Friday and a nine hour weekend shift.

In addition every day they were required to clean their employer’s private residence.

Along with violence they were threatened with deportation by their employer.

This and the many other examples open a window on the truth behind Blair and Brown’s ‘economic miracle’, their boast that Britain is the most employer friendly country in Europe is not an idle one and this report lays bare exactly what ‘employer friendly’ laws and the never ending drive to deregulation and contracting out really mean in terms of human suffering.

For Blair and this new Labour government this is the future that they wish to impose on every worker in the country in order to maintain the sacred profits of the capitalist class.

What stops them is the organised strength of the working class.

The TUC which commissioned this report must now be forced to use this strength to bring down the Blair government and put an end to this capitalist system that can only survive today through the misery and type of exploitation that every worker thought had been consigned to the social history books of the nineteenth century.

• Concluded