Friday, October 26, 2012

Farm workers unite

Remember that Countryside Alliance? Defending the way of life of those living in rural areas. The local squires and land-owners have now abandoned their low-paid farm-workers. The Countryside Alliance had absolutely no interest in the problems of rural poverty that it paid lip service to. Landowners and agri-businessmen have done so much to make life as hard as possible for rural workers.

Farming minister David Heath announced the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, the last of the wages councils. There are just four weeks of "consultation" before farm workers lose this special protection. Their current minimum pay, which is legally enforced, is just 2p an hour above the national minimum. Wages are bound to fall. The board fixes overtime rates at time and a half and that will no doubt disappear. But the coalition announced plans will result in agricultural employers setting pay locally. Rights that the AWB has secured for the 152,000 casual farm workers in England and Wales, such as payment for annual leave, could also be lost. Whitehall officials estimate casual workers could lose up to £140m from their wages over 10 years and £100m from payment for annual leave. Currently all casual farm workers in England and Wales have their pay set by the Agricultural Wages Board, which was established in 1924 after the bitter Norfolk farm workers’ strike.

 It is still one of the most dangerous occupations with a high accident rate. Isolated, under-unionised, with little choice of other work, a third of agricultural workers live in tied housing, exceptionally vulnerable to the whims of employers.The board sets fair rents for tied housing – £28 a week for a caravan – but there will be no rent limits from now on. The board also sets sick pay, holiday pay and a graded pay progression, important when so many work on small farms with little chance of promotion. The board ordains other conditions, such as warm clothing, essential for outdoor work. It sets a pay rate and age for child pickers (Nine-year-olds were discovered picking spring onions from dawn till dusk in freezing weather in  last year.), who will lose all protection from now on.

Where's the four-wheel drive, green wellies, Barbour jacket protesters now? This is a useful reminder (if one is needed) that the Countryside Alliance was a thoroughly anti-working class tool of the rich, a front for certain sections of the ruling class to defend their interests which is the right to use the land they have stolen in any way they wish. It was part of a strategy is to create the illusion of a “broad-based movement”, claiming to unite all people who live in the countryside, regardless of their class position. Many of those of the so-called Countryside Alliance have been bitter opponents of the working class movement at every turn. There present silence is proof.

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