A Shropshire gangmaster has been stripped of its GLA licence after inspectors discovered the company was systematically skimming workers’ pay, resulting in employees receiving less than the National Minimum Wage.

TRS Personnel Ltd of Stafford Park, Telford and run by Shrewsbury couple Jeff and Vicki Lawrence, lost their permit to supply workers to the fresh produce sector in the area after a GLA investigation into the company found it had been ‘chopping’ workers’ hours and apparently doctoring payment records.

Numerous complaints from employees led to an inspection earlier this month, after which the company’s license was revoked with immediate effect, and the deadline to appeal the decision has now passed.

The company had breached four GLA licensing standards - with three breaches rated as critical; one critical breach will result in a license revocation. TRS Personnel was found to be billing factories for more hours than their employees were being paid for.

GLA investigators said payroll records produced by the company appeared to have been altered to disguise systematic underpayment of workers. From a typical sample period of four weeks in August 2015, 26 of 102 workers placed were found to have been paid for fewer hours than they had worked.

When asked for a schedule of holiday pay records for workers being supplied to one factory, TRS produced a document with 56 names on it; but the payroll company had records for 268 workers being supplied for the same week. On the TRS schedule the difference between the holiday pay due and actually paid was - in all but three cases – less than £20. On the unaltered payroll, more than 60 of the workers whose names were removed were owed more than £150 in holiday entitlements.

Further analysis of TRS records for three of the sample weeks showed that TRS Personnel had avoided paying £941 in one week in workers’ salaries, £659 in the next and £700 in the third. In the same weeks – respectively – 48, 44 and 29 workers were found to have been paid less than the National Minimum Wage. The final critical standard breach was withholding wages; workers were not given their accrued holiday pay when they left the company.

Lastly, TRS failed to meet standards on worker benefits (employers should be able to show that a worker receives the paid annual leave to which they are legally entitled), but a comparison of TRS’ schedule with one from the payroll companies - for the period January to August 2015 – showed that only one of 34 workers had accrued holiday pay and had received it from TRS’ side, but that 147 workers were due holiday pay from the factory’s side. Only 39 had actually been paid.    

Commenting on the breaches at TRS, GLA Director of Licensing Nicola Ray said, “TRS Personnel systematically denied money due to their workers using a number of different methods – effectively preying on the lowly-paid by skimming their wages to boost company profits.

“By employing such tactics the employees received less than the National Minimum Wage and such pre-determined exploitation will not be ignored by the GLA. The Lawrences showed no willingness to comply with legal, regulatory or professional requirements and standards and have effectively now been banned from working in our regulated sector.”

Without a GLA licence, it is illegal for TRS Personnel to provide workers for temporary roles in agriculture, horticulture or any associated processing and packaging.