Indonesians who paid thousands to work on UK farm sacked within weeks
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/21/indonesians-paid-thousands-work-uk-farm-sacked-within-weeks
Posted by F0urLeafCl0ver
Indonesians who paid thousands to work on UK farm sacked within weeks
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/21/indonesians-paid-thousands-work-uk-farm-sacked-within-weeks
Posted by F0urLeafCl0ver
16 Comments
“Indonesian workers scammed by con artists” would probably be a more realistic headline.
Nothing short of exploitation.
>The labour exploitation watchdog is investigating allegations that he was one of several workers charged illegal fees of up to £1,100 by an Indonesian organisation claiming it would get them to the UK faster.
>In Indonesia the worker earned about £100 a month selling food and said his parents were “very disappointed” as he had sold everything for a shot at helping his family. He said: “I feel confused and mad and angry about this situation. I have no job in Indonesia [and] I’ve spent all my money to come to the UK.”
[deleted]
>The workers said the targets at the farm in Ledbury included picking 20kg of cherries an hour. Another of the sacked pickers said: “It was very hard to meet the target because day by day there was less fruit.”
that’s a frigging hard target
Nearly an hour and no sign of the “whip all the cripples on benefits” crowd. Elon won’t be pleased.
So yet again farmers just want to scam some unsuspecting foreigners at the same time as suggesting British people are too idle to do the work.
20kg of cherries an hour. no wonder british people dont want to do these jobs
“and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
The world is seeing more and more modern slavery sadly. It’s a race to the bottom. Labour should never have been allowed to be traded across borders. The WTO rules have done so much long term damage to the world economy all so that a few fat cats could buy some extra yachts.
Our government should be coming down forcefully on modern slavery and dishing out 20+ year sentences plus forfeiture of assets, but sadly not only do they not care, but they’ve also announced out loud that they’re running out of prison spaces and will not be building any more prisons. That’s like telling an arsonist that you’ve always wanted someone to burn down your home.
I am a Eastern European. Some years back I applied to a couple of farms in the UK for a summer job.
Everything was going great until they realized I’ve settled in the UK for years, I know perfect English and I’ve had previous mid-level employment in the UK. Then they all rejected me.
They are looking for people with bad english and no knowledge of their rights that are far away from support systems. Because they would be easier to exploit.
the treatment of migrant workers in the agricultural and care work sectors is absolutely heinous in this country. incredibly exploitative. [the bureau of investigative journalism has done a lot of good work on this topic](https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/trapped-in-work/)
**Billionaire businessman James Dyson has sparked outrage after he said it should be easier to hire and fire people**. The Brexit-supporting vacuum inventor also called for the government to scrap corporation tax, saying profits shouldn’t be taxed.12 Nov 2017
I must have misunderstood. I thought Brexit voters and Farage/Johnson/Truss/Sunak/Braverman/Patel volunteered their offspring and future generations for these roles? But we’re hiring seasonal workers from the other side of the planet instead? Arf. I blame back of a fag packet populist politics.
The problem with these cases are the scams are outside of British jurisdiction or indeed responsibility, they pay thousands to middlemen in their own country who secure them the job.
I’ve heard firsthand anecdotes, even in European countries (the poorer ones) of people having to pay a bribe to get a job opening. like literally have to pay money to get a job, and not even a well paid one!. Its a whole level of WTF and it means they are essentially working for free for the first year to pay off the bribe (or to pay off a relative who payed the bribe for you). the migration fees for low ‘skilled’ foreign workers is the same thing, the average Nigerian doesn’t have 20k or whatever it costs them to immigrate to the UK so they borrow from relatives. Same even with people paying smugglers. It’s still quite a good deal for them though.
I know a lot of Indonesians and the ones here picking fruit will have taken loans financed against land. This means that not only are we wasting the time of these people we are splitting up families and potentially robbing them of what little equity they have.
This has forced some into becoming illegal immigrants staying past the dates of the visa they had had expired and being further exploited by bad people willing to risk employing them.
We need to know WHICH supermarkets these companies were picking for. It says MAJOR supermarkets, so they should be bearing some responsibility here for moral if not legal grounds.