Gangmaster Licensing legislation topped the agenda at the Association of Labour Providers’ (ALP) annual meeting, held on Monday in London.
Chairman Mark Boleat kicked off proceedings by outlining how a new user group has now been set up for the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA), in a bid to make the organisation more effective. “We welcome the GLA’s move to start taking decisive action, which they did against vegetable supplier Bomfords, which was charging £1 below the reasonable minimum rate for an employee, at the start of the year,” he said. “This new user group should help make the organisation more efficient.”
Another issue hot on the agenda was minimum charge rates. The ALP has spent the last few years urging Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs and the GLA to target labour users known to be paying unrealistically low rates, said ALP director David Camp. Lord Rooker, minister of state for sustainable farming and food, who was invited to speak at the meeting, wrote to the UK’s major retailers in November 2006 advising them of an indicative rate a labour provider should charge per hour to cover its statutory obligations, and this rate was then posted on the GLA website. The ALP proposed that one comprehensive set of rates be drawn up and endorsed by key stakeholders
“On April 17 this year, these proposed rates were endorsed by the GLA board, which consists of representatives from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) and the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), among others,” said Camp. “These figures will now be published on the GLA website and released to the industry as guidance. The tables may be provided to current or prospective labour-user clients to facilitate discussions towards agreement of fair and legal charge rates. They should ensure that supermarkets can ensure a correct rate is being applied throughout the supply chain.”
Incorporating minimum wage, holiday requirement, NI payments and a small amount of statutory sick pay, the legal minimum rate in the agricultural sector now stands at £6.56 per hour.
The Accession States’ Worker Registration Scheme fee has increased to £90, and the ALP is keen to abolish the system altogether, writing to. “The scheme grossly miscalculates the number of workers from accession states in the UK, and now comes at an outrageous cost for a bog-standard procedure,” explained Boleat. “We will get it abolished - but it is a question of time.”
Lord Rooker congratulated the ALP on the positive role it has played since its inauguration. “We need to get everyone operating within the law, or it is the good guys that suffer at the expense of a few bad guys,” he told the room. “We also need to make sure that the media knows about the positive impact we are having, and doesn’t just bad news about labour issues in the UK.”
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