On Monday (1st October), the Labour minister warned at the Party Conference, being held in Manchester, that the day could mark the final Agricultural Wages Order. The 64 year-old Agricultural Wages Board, which sets wages for over 150,000 agricultural workers, including minors and migrant workers, was axed as part of the Conservative-led government’s ‘bonfire of the quangoes’ in 2010.   

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Ms Creagh said 2012 could mark the final pay rise for agricultural workers, fruit pickers and food packers in England and Wales, whose wages for the year ahead are decided in negotiations between the AWB, government and industry representatives. Former Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said that the market should set wages, and insisted this was not a Tory “plot to drive down wages;” nevertheless, critics believe that is exactly what the decision to do away with the board will achieve.

Legal minimum wage requirements will still apply to agricultural most agricultural workers. However, by the government’s own reckoning, the loss of the AWB will remove an estimated £9 million from the rural economy, at a time when ministers have expressed concerns about ‘rural neglect’ and exposed a growing divide between spending in urban and rural regions.  

Monday’s Agricultural Wages Order secured hourly pay rates from £3.11 an hour for minors to £9.40 for grade 6 workers.

Back the Apple campaign

In response to the threat to the incomes of thousands of agricultural workers, the Labour Party launched its ‘Back the Apple’ campaign, aimed at protecting the workers’ pay and conditions by retaining the Agricultural Wages Board. Although many agricultural workers earn around the minimum wage, the sector is by far the most dangerous in the UK.

Long hours, remote working conditions, and contact with unpredictable animals and heavy machinery all contribute to agriculture’s high level of work-related accidents. Per 100,000 workers, the number of workplace fatalities in agriculture is three times higher than the UK’s second most dangerous occupation, construction. Under the new regime, agricultural workers also stand to lose out on sick pay and holiday pay.

Ms Creagh updated the delegates on the progress of the Back the Apple campaign. She said, “I am pleased to say that, despite the Tories and Liberal Democrats, voting to abolish the AWB, thanks to our campaign alongside Labour MPs, Unite the Union and the Welsh Assembly Government, the Government has not managed to get rid of it.”

In Northern Ireland, agriculture minister Michelle O’Neill announced on Thursday 20th September that she plans to keep Northern Ireland’s AWB intact. Ms O’Neill said, “In November last year I launched a public consultation on a Review of the Agricultural Wages Board structure and following its conclusion I gave careful consideration to the responses received. I believe the decision I have now reached is in the best interests of agricultural workers here.

“I firmly believe that the AWB structure is a valuable forum for wage negotiations and importantly is used as a benchmark for the wider agri-food industry. It will now continue to protect the rights of low paid agricultural workers, including migrant workers, here by ensuring enforceable employment conditions which I believe can only have a positive impact on the sustainability of the rural economy.”

Addressing the Labour Party Conference in Manchester, Mary Creagh criticised the incumbent government over its lack of progress in implementing a supermarket ombudsperson with real powers to curtail exploitation in the grocery supply chain and the worsening state of employment and access to vital services in the countryside. She also took aim at the coalition’s previous ministers’ refusal to act on behalf of dairy farmers earlier in the year, when major milk buyers announced successive price cuts which would have seen farm-gate milk prices fall 5pence per litre below the cost of production.   

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