“We want heads,” warned gangmaster tsar Paul Whitehouse, as the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA) became an official body last Friday.
The GLA named its board members - see freshinfo.com - and kicked off a series of multi-retail funded workshops to begin to prepare the industry for August 2006, when the GLA will have the power to prosecute labour providers found to be in contravention of its legal requirements.
Tesco hosted the first workshop to cover the existing code of practice for labour providers and the forthcoming issuing and enforcement of statutory gangmaster licences.
GLA chairman Whitehouse said that proposals for the licensing of gangmasters will be finalised by May 16, after which a 90-day consultation period will run through to September. The licences should be passed by parliament in late October and applications for licences will be invited in November or December. “Offences will be switched on by August 2006,” he told the meeting.
“Tesco is open to the attentions of the unscrupulous - we know that to our cost,” said Terry Babbs, the retailer’s international trading law and technical director. “It is a role of law enforcement to try and tackle these abuses and regulate the market. But it cannot do this on its own - it needs the whole supply chain to work together to help self-regulate and uphold the law.”
Zad Padda of Ethical First, a consultancy specialising in issues surrounding the management of migrant/ casual labour, listed a number of temporary labour issues and abuses that have led to a stream of negative media coverage.
The Temporary Labour Working Group (TLWG), set up in 2002 to establish a transparent and verifiable gangmaster registration scheme, has made a real difference, he said. “Progress has been staggering. In a relatively short time, we have completed a code, conducted trials, created independent audit tools and a labour providers’ toolkit. Now we have achieved our aim of establishing statutory licences.”
Babbs added that the series of workshops represented another commitment by the retail industry and its partners to “do something ahead of the law. A number of things have to happen to help deliver on this commitment,” he said. “Drawing up a code is not easy, but relatively it is the easy part of the process. Each member of the TLWG will do their bit to ensure that the code does its job - to raise standards and protect workers.”
Further workshops will be hosted by Waitrose (Wokingham, April 11), Sainsbury’s (London, April 13), Somerfield (Bristol, April 15) and Co-op and M&S (Manchester, May 4). “These are based on a model developed by Ethical First with Asda, which has been adopted by the other retailers,” Padda told the Journal. “Asda took us on to provide - at its expense - a free consultancy service for its supply chain.
“The retailers are not just hosting these events, they are taking an active interest because they know they cannot ignore these issues. They are becoming an integral part of their core business strategies and an increasingly important element of their planning.”
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