Time to get in on the Act

From December 2006 the Gangmasters Licensing Act will make it illegal for food processors and packers to hire workers from an unlicensed gangmaster, meaning employers will have to be much more vigilant to ensure their labour suppliers are operating within the law.

Set up in the wake of the Morecambe Bay cockle picker tragedy last year, the act is designed to protect the rights of casual workers by making it compulsory for gangmasters to hold a licence issued by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA).. This comes into effect from October 1 and licence applications began last month.

Paul Cotton, partner and food law specialist at law firm Eversheds explains what the changes will mean for the industry. “There is concern that some suppliers of gang labour use fraudulent and exploitative working practices: employing illegal migrant workers; engaging in tax fraud; encouraging benefit fraud; making illegal deductions from wages; and flouting health and safety and minimum wage legislation,” he says. “For food processors and packers that rely on this kind of labour, the stakes are getting higher and this legislation means they will soon be required to demonstrate that they have taken steps to ensure that gangmasters are properly licensed.”

But according to Cotton, ensuring compliance shouldn’t be a headache for employers, who will simply have to check the GLA register (online at www.gla.gov.uk) to see if their labour provider is licensed.

“There will be a defence if the labour user can prove that he took all reasonable steps to satisfy himself that the gangmaster was acting under the authority of a valid licence and had no reasonable grounds for suspecting the gangmaster was not licensed,” adds Cotton.

Ultimately, the new law will benefit not only workers, but also the employer, ensuring that supplies of casual labour remain available to the industry to help meet seasonal or peaks in demand.One Gloucester-based recruitment agency, where the ethical principles underpinning the Act have long been in place, says such an approach offers real benefits to both parties.

The Omega Resource Group works with some of the blue chip food and drink manufacturers and has recruited over 400 people into the industry in the last 18 months.

When it comes to migrant workers the group has a recruitment strategy, which it claims is quite unusual for the industry - it runs selection and assessment centres in Poland with its clients, as group director James Strickland explains.

“We take our clients [employers] direct to Poland to select and assess candidates, who are given a video presentation showing the environment they will be working in. This is particularly important in the food and drink industry - the candidates need to understand that it can be noisy, etc.”

Strickland believes this approach builds trust early on between an employer and worker, as well as with the agency, and enables the employer to be a part of the recruitment process from start to finish rather than just saying: ‘We need 50 people in our factory, can you supply them?’

“We don’t supply anybody into the UK food manufacturing industry without the employer having gone to the offices in Poland first to run an assessment centre, so employers know they are using a supplier with honesty and integrity. Employee retention levels are much better this way,” says Strickland. “Over 90% of employees we recruit stay with the company permanently, which makes for a much more stable workforce.”

Once candidates have been selected, Omega arranges their flights, accommodation in England and assigns a welfare officer to the employer’s account to deal with all the day to day issues associated with migrants living and working in the UK - a service that the group claims is quite unusual.

“This way we avoid the whole, ‘12 migrant workers living in one house’ scenario. Instead we help integrate them into the community. It works seamlessly,” claims Strickland.

And while companies benefit from increased staff retention, the employees get a 100% understanding of the role they are going to fill, the company and their working environment before they arrive.

Bank accounts and national insurance numbers are handled by the agency, which also provides a welcome pack to the UK and the candidates’ new area. “The new legislation is very much needed to avoid recruitment agencies abusing eastern European labour. It has definitely woken up the recruitment industry.”

However, Strickland believes the act doesn’t go far enough and should be rolled out to the whole of Europe (and become European Union law) to ensure complete protection. “At the moment there is a chink in the armour where UK companies and agencies use suppliers in Europe, where the same regulations don’t apply to recruit. It would have been good to see them also using the act.” FM

For more information on the GLA and how to check your labour provider is licensed go to http://www.gla.gov.uk​​