Indonesian picker allegations highlight risk of exploitation for seasonal workers

The managing director of a seasonal worker scheme operator has said he would be reluctant to work with third-party recruiters in future after Indonesian pickers working in the UK this season were allegedly charged illegal fees.

Jan-Willem Naerebout of Agri-HR acknowledges that there are risks associated with handing responsibility to external recruiters abroad, however he maintains that significant safeguards were put in place to prevent Indonesian workers from being financially exploited before they reached the UK.

In any case, Indonesian law prevents a foreign agency from being a licenced recruiter in the country, so Agri-HR was unable to set up its own branch office in Indonesia – as it has done in the other countries it recruits from, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Bulgaria.

Instead, Agri-HR launched a pilot with PT Mardel, a GLAA-licensed recruiter based in Indonesia, to recruit batches of no more than 500 workers with the help of the Indonesian Embassy in London.

However, it was another unlicensed organisation called Forkom that allegedly broke UK employment laws by recruiting workers without a GLAA licence and allegedly charging them fees, saying it could get them to the UK faster.

Forkom is believed to be a members’ forum for Indonesians trying to find work abroad that was set up in January 2023 after around 250 Indonesians decided to overstay their seasonal worker visas in UK.

The organisation says it campaigned hard for the seasonal workers to be allowed to return to UK farms for a second year.

The Guardian broke the story on 21 July after human rights activist Andy Hall had brought to light allegations that work-finding fees of up to £1,100 were paid by Indonesian pickers at soft fruit and cherry producer Haygrove to Forkom.

The newspaper said it had seen evidence of apparent fee payments by three workers. And these extra charges came in addition to the more than £1,000 that was legitimately transferred for flights and visas to PT Mardel.

The Guardian also raised the fact that the three workers, plus two others, were sent home after five to six weeks for not picking fast enough. Once the cost of coming to Britain – as well as living costs – are taken into account, several said they were left with significant debts.

Delif Subeki of PT Mardel told FPJ that his recruitment agency was introduced to Forkom by the Indonesian Ministry of Manpower and made a commitment to “give priority” to the forum’s members.

However, he stressed that PT Mardel had an exclusive agreement with Agri-HR and had committed not to use any third parties in the recruitment process.

Applicants were “clearly informed” of this arrangement, Suebki said, and were told to only pay for costs approved by the Indonesian authorities (visa-processing fees, return flights, medical check-up, insurance etc).

Forkom’s chairman Agus Hariyono told FPJ that one worker “entrusted” his organisation funds “as a deposit” so that the money would be ready for when “it was time to pay PT Mardel for his departure to the UK”.

Hariyono said the money was subsequently returned to the worker so he could pay PT Mardel directly. He said Forkom clarified this with The Indonesian Ministry of Manpower.

The Forkom chair also denied that any applicants were told they would be helped to reach the UK sooner.

“Forkom never had the intention to harm other people,” he said, explaining that the forum was “formed to help make it easier for people to work as UK seasonal workers”.

Hariyono added that Forkom “are not partners or agents of PT Mardel” and that there is “no working relationship at all”.

There are currently three separate investigations into the allegations. One investigation is by the UK’s labour exploitation watchdog, the GLAA; another is by the Indonesian authorities; and a third is being conducted independently by Agri-HR.

Not the first time

It is illegal to recruit without a licence under UK and Indonesian law. It is also illegal to charge workers fees for finding them work in the UK. However, the latter isn’t the case in Indonesia or a number of other countries from which UK seasonal workers are sourced.

Naerebout of Agri-HR says this discrepancy increases the risk of workers being financially exploited in their own country before they reach the UK.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time workers seeking seasonal work at UK fruit and vegetable farms have allegedly been affected financially. Indeed, Agri-HR’s website was cloned in Kazakhstan two years ago, causing a number of prospective workers to be charged fees for work that wasn’t available.

The Agri-HR boss says he had reservations about recruiting workers from Indonesia following the well-documented allegations in 2022 that Indonesian berry pickers had been saddled with debts of thousands of pounds by unlicensed brokers charging illegal extra fees.

The additional charges were allegedly for things such as compulsory language training not required by farms, and accommodation in Jakarta while awaiting visas.

The 2022 controversy led to UK recruitment agency AG Recruitment being delisted as a seasonal worker scheme operator.

Why Indonesia?

Despite his concerns, Naerebout says that this season he took the decision to source no more than 500 workers from PT Mardel in Indonesia – to spread his geographical risk by recruiting a proportion of pickers far from central Asia.

This was a strategic pilot rather than a necessity, with Naerebout saying he could have easily recruited enough workers from its own offices in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

However, given the proximity to the two countries to Russia, they are considered to be at some risk of invasion. And the UK’s seasonal worker scheme operators want to avoid another scramble for pickers akin to the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Naerebout added that most UK farms have had positive experiences with Indonesian pickers, since they tend to be “friendly, hard-working people who are great to have on the team”. Other advantages are the size of the country and the number of people seeking employment, according to Agri-HR.

To avoid Indonesian workers being charged additional fees, the Agri-HR MD says he also negotiated a legislation change with the Indonesian labour authorities for the pre-departure training of workers to be delivered free of charge.

In total, 136 Indonesian nationals arrived at five different UK farms in May and June 2024, with an additional 12 set to arrive in the next few weeks. Further recruitment from Indonesia has been halted with immediate effect.

Early dismissal

As well as highlighting the continued risk of exploitation under the seasonal worker scheme, the controversy shows how things can go wrong for workers if they are dismissed early from placements.

If a worker is asked to leave a job for failing to meet picking targets, they can sometimes be placed at a different farm. However, moving the five workers from Haygrove was not possible in this instance because there were no transfer places available.

Transferring the workers was made more challenging by the fact that most UK farms are not equipped to receive Indonesian workers. They would have had to deliver training and translate their procedures into Indonesian.

Three of the five dismissed workers were flown home on 25 June, while the other two ran away to London and refused to board flights. The Guardian reports that these two men have now been given new jobs in a packhouse after an intervention by a migrant welfare activist.

Haygrove’s managing director of UK farming, Beverly Dixon, said the company followed a legal and fair performance management and disciplinary process, and that the workers had opportunities in different crops but underperformed throughout.

She said targets were “set based on achievable standards with the majority of pickers sometimes achieving more than double that speed”.

Dixon also noted that all five men worked more than 32 hours each week, and that Haygrove consistently had to make up the men’s wages because of poor performance.

“Our aim is to train our new seasonal workers, so that they stay for the whole season. It isn’t in our interests to pay the labour provider to recruit seasonal workers for them to then leave,” she told FPJ. “Our intention is to help them improve. We want people to come back year after year.”

Guaranteed earnings?

The government’s Migration Advisory Committee has recommended that seasonal visas should continue to “ensure food security” but that they should include more protections, such as guaranteeing at least two months of work.

Dixon commented that “giving seasonal workers the opportunity to earn well is really important”.

She said any review of the seasonal worker scheme should consider the total earnings in relation to the distance that some workers now have to travel. Workers have been sourced from much further afield since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

This would mean that if a grower runs out of work, either the farm or the labour provider would still have to pay the worker a minimum total sum. However, in cases where there is a performance issue, the guarantee would not apply.

Dixon also expressed her desire for an independent grievance mechanism to help workers speak out against infringements to their rights.

She stressed, however, that the majority of seasonal workers are happy with the scheme, enjoy working on UK farms, and return year on year.

Dixon pointed to the encouraging results of the 2022 seasonal worker survey. Some 92 per cent of those that responded said they were happy with their pay while working in the UK. Meanwhile, 94 per cent said they were happy with the safety on farms, and 88.3 per cent were happy with their accommodation.