Along with the protectionist trade issues raised by the recent so-called “Bra Wars”, the issue of migrant labour is highly contentious and raises some deeply ingrained fears, writes John Smith, chairman and managing director at Greyfriars UK.
And there is some duplicity on this issue too. While it seems to be OK to attract skilled health professionals from third world countries to prop up the skills-shortage in our own National Health Service, the rules are different when it comes to importing manual labour.
However, the fact remains that migrant labour has been the saving of the UK’s horticultural and agricultural industries.
Without migrant labour, how would we get our strawberries, mushrooms and cabbages picked? And while the likes of HOPS, CONCORDIA and SAWS have provided some respite in recent years, these schemes were, at best, stop-gaps for a gradually worsening labour situation.
Whereas in the past we worried about whether pickers would bother to turn up to harvest crops on weekends or high days and holidays - with the resultant waste if they did not and exorbitant cost if they did - the picture has been dramatically changed with the enlargement of the EU and the accession of the ten new member states, together with its enormous pool of resources, from eastern Europe.
At Greyfriars, in common with other UK companies, we have often found our experiences with agency staff less than satisfactory. Nevertheless, we found ourselves in the position of needing a substantial number of manual staff for our expanding mushroom, sweetcorn and garlic grading, packing and processing facilities in north Yorkshire. Unemployment in the area is at an all-time low and interest in our vacancies non-existent, so we were forced to look further afield for our workforce.
Recognising the ever-increasing problems with recruitment of manual labour in the UK, and recognising a business opportunity when we saw one, we decided to take the labour solution one step further - and establish our own labour recruitment agency abroad.
Whereas traditionally agency staff come from many countries - with all the inherent problems caused by a multitude of different languages and cultures - as employers we could see the benefits a cohesive, close-knit workforce could bring to prospective employers. For this reason, following an examination of the north eastern European states, we decided to target Latvia. Our existing contacts in that country suggested that there was an untapped, large and willing workforce ready and eagerly waiting for Anvil Recruitment.
From the first we felt that a long-term presence on the ground was a prerequisite. The appointment of a local manager and the opening of an Anvil Recruitment office in Riga enabled us to assess and select potential employees on the ground, ensuring a good synergy between the expectations of both employee and employer, and remove the cost, risk and sheer hard work out of recruitment for hard-pressed employers.
We now have access to a vast pool of workers who actually live up to their names and, in return for a decent wage and a roof over their heads, want to work - what a novelty! These workers are not taking jobs from UK workers - there are simply not enough experienced workers in the UK until people are trained in the right disciplines in the first place.
There is no need to look outside the EU - the pool of unemployed and disenchanted within it is more than adequate for our needs. In Poland alone the reported unemployment rate is around 20 per cent. And it makes sense from a taxation point of view too. By employing EU workers, rather than importing people from outside the EU, we enable citizens to be self-sufficient, ensure taxes are paid into the EU and remove the need for EU taxpayers to support such potential workers. And it is good for third world countries too. Using our own resources means we stop attracting both manual and skilled workers from countries such as India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, leaving those countries free to maximise their own natural resources.
And using such labour removes the need for all the bureaucratic paperwork associated with work permits. Anvil ensures that Geryfriars’ Latvian workers have the correct legal documentation, relevant skills and support to enable them to work in the industry.
And for once, I find myself thanking the meticulous nature of the previous communist system - well one element of it anyway. Under communism, former eastern European workers were all issued with a work passport - an invaluable record of where they have worked and for how long - enabling us to assess candidates and check references thoroughly. So much so that in the 18 months we have been operating Anvil Recruitment, and of the 100 employees we have placed, problems have been minor, (of the language and homesickness variety), and few and far between. And they are likely to get even fewer, as there is now a small, but growing, mutually supportive community of Latvians living and working here in the heart of Yorkshire.
For the employer, the primary benefit of employing eastern European staff is a willing workforce, offering greater continuity to their business. The Latvian attitude to work is generally very refreshing - they smile, look interested, try hard and often can be seen running from task-to-task. And whereas agency staff can be changed at regular intervals, often just as they have learned the ropes, your own staff are just that - your own.
Potential employers are not charged a fee, but Anvil does charge an enrolment fee to candidates. This covers the various services we supply in order to find a satisfactory placement, such as creating, translating and presenting CV’s; conducting seminars in Riga about life in Britain; organising flights from and to regional airports; collection and transport to the place of employment; accommodation; daily home-to-work transport and dealing with all paperwork for the work registration scheme.
Our Latvian workforce has solved all of Greyfriars’ own domestic labour problems, along with those of our fellow employers locally. Indeed we attribute much of our award-winning success to our valued team and even offer regular English lessons for our Latvian employees. To date, we have provided a wide range of staff for industry, as well as the leisure, agricultural and horticultural sectors.
In fact, so successful has our venture into manual recruitment been, that after 18 months of refining our systems, policies and procedures, we now plan to make the service available to a wider range of prospective employees across the full gamut of industry sectors. We are also currently investigating the addition of another division, based here in the UK and dedicated to the recruitment of salaried staff for the fresh produce and food industries.
So, just as the UK cannot protect its industries from international competition through prohibitive trade barriers, EU migrant labour must be left alone and the UK’s workers must learn to stand on their own two feet.
DON’T CLOSE THE DOOR
I read with some interest and considerable dismay John Smith’s views on our migrant labour market this week, writes Christie Lumb, executive director at Concordia. The one comment I can wholeheartedly agree with is, “how would we get our strawberries, mushrooms and cabbages picked without the help of migrant labour?”
The SAWS scheme, of which Concordia and HOPS are two of the nine operators, supplied 25,000 seasonal harvest workers until the beginning of 2005. The scheme has operated for more than forty years and although the figure of 25,000 workers has only been possible since 2002, nevertheless, stop-gap is not a word I would have used to describe the scheme. I can only assume that Greyfriars has no personal experience of the labour force Smith is so ready to discard.
Historically, when Spain, and then Portugal, entered the European Union, the supply of labour from those countries for our agricultural/horticultural industries dwindled to nothing very quickly. The new countries are very likely to follow the same path, albeit more slowly perhaps, but I believe it will happen.
SAWS, rightly or wrongly offered seasonal work for many years to students.
Harvesting fruit and vegetables was the only work opportunity possible and many young medical, legal or teaching students have paid for their studies over the years in this way. Now, the possibilities are boundless, not just for students with their language skills and their IT knowledge, but for the many unemployed who perceive a better lifestyle available in Britain.
We also had high unemployment in Britain in the eighties but it did not follow that the industry benefited from that. On the contrary, doing nothing seemed a preferred option to harvesting fruit and vegetables, which is why SAWS has been so successful.
I believe that workers hoping to obtain jobs in Britain will be seeking more permanent work and the fringe benefits that go with that. Farms are a good starting point; accommodation of some sort is available, migrant labour is welcomed, and work is readily available. But how long before other opportunities are discovered, skills utilised, and full time work in the dry, which is not subject to the vagaries of weather and season, has become the more attractive option? It may be days, weeks or maybe another year before the trend begins.
If, by then, we have been foolhardy enough to close the door on other migrant labour, the industry may find itself once more in the same state it was in during the eighties, with crops rotting because of insufficient labour.
I believe that to safeguard our agricultural industry change should occur gradually, with a balancing act between SAWS and accession states for at least a three-year period. It would become very clear during that time how the labour flow was working and if indeed it were apparent that SAWS or a similar scheme was superfluous to requirements, I would commend Mr Smith for his insight and support his idea wholeheartedly. However, I am not convinced that his solution is the right one and I feel there is too much at stake for too many people to act in any way other than cautiously in the current climate.
