Somerset - Rural Revolt - Frome - Shows how its done !

Somerset Farm workers and local "progressives" keep up the pressure on farming minister David Heath over Agricultural Wages Board

Farm workers and supporters campaigning to save the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) were back on the streets of Frome to lobby the surgery of Liberal Democrat farming minister David Heath Saturday (2nd March 2013).

 

 

 

David Heath , the Minister, MP for Somerton and Frome, dodged questions from members of the public and farm workers union Unite when they protested outside his surgery in February.

 

Country Standard supporters who backed the Lobby praised local activists for their continued support in highlighting the plight of rural workers in Somerset

They again tried to ask him why he has decided to abolish the AWB, despite signing an Early Day Motion in 2000 in support of the Board, which sets legal rates of pay and conditions for 150,000 agricultural workers. Abolition of the AWB will mean losses worth at least £25 million a year for farm workers.

The south west has 26,000 agricultural workers, with 1,000 working in Mr Heath’s constituency.

Farm worker Steve Leniec, who chairs Unite’s rural and agricultural committee, said Mr Heath should also come clean over coalition government plans to water down protection for gangworkers under the guise of ‘simplifying’ the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

Mr Leniec said: "David Heath has recently called the AWB ‘a costly relic of a previous age’. That’s not what he was calling it in 2000. He has since claimed he made this commitment to the Early Day Motion before there was a national minimum wage. But the national minimum wage was in force months beforehand. And if he knew anything about the industry and its workers, he would be honest enough to admit that the AWB is about far more than a minimum wage.

"A clear majority of those responding to the government’s consultation in the autumn on the abolition of the AWB, including farmers and farm workers, disagree with him and the government. He’s not listening to the industry and he’s not listening to his constituents. We hope he’ll listen to us this Saturday."

 

The people of Somerset get their chance to have a say on the behavior of their LibDem MP's on 2nd May 2013 at the County Council Elections, where the demand to maintain the Agricultural Wages Board and secure a Rural Living Wage will be on the ballot paper

 

Turn the Anger into Votes in Somerset

Frome - LibDem Farm Minister - Rural Poverty - Rural Revolt

David Heath LibDem Farm Minister axes Agricultural Wages Board, he and his Party supported prior to the 2010 General election today he faced a protest by local  farm workers and supporters of Country Standard.

Axing the Agricultural wages Board and forcing thousands of Farm workers into poverty does not seem to trouble Somerton & Frome MP.

A majority of those responding to the consultation on Agricultural wages Board called for it to be maintained, and DEFRA itself accepted it would take millions out of the rural economy (ie they anticipate pay cuts)

The LibDems were happy to support Labour's proposals for increased powers for the Grocery Code Adjudicator (GCA) to regulate the power of supermarkets and its relationships with farmers, but obviously think farm workers should not have similar protection, what is clear is the LibDem's do not care about Rural Poverty

Interestingly, his fellow LibDem MP's don't seem to have been consulted on his actions and a number (including Cornish LibDem Andrew George) have stated that they believe it would be a disaster if the AWB was axed.

Stop Rural Poverty - Support the Agricultural Wages Board

Justice For Farm Workers - No To Rural Poverty - Frome - Somerset

Lobby of David Heath MP’s constituency surgery at the main public library in Frome at 10.30am Saturday 2nd February 2013

The address of the library is Justice Lane, Frome BA11 1BE.

“The reason that we are targeting David Heath MP (LibDem) is that despite supporting the AWB when he was in opposition, he is now as farming minister leading the government’s campaign to abolish the Board.

The issue – 

Farm and horticultural workers will see their wages and conditions dramatically reduced under government plans to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) this year. 

Highly qualified and skilled workers will see their pay reduced from a maximum of £10.06 per hour (depending on qualifications and responsibility) to the national minimum wage of £6.19. Overtime rates will disappear, holidays reduced and sick pay will be a thing of the past. 

Protection in their tied homes will be reduced and rents will increase. These are isolated and vulnerable workers and need our help.”

NO TO RURAL POVERTY

Labour Defend's The AWB - Rural Living Wage In The Lord's

17 January 2013

 

Labour in the House of Lords has stopped the government’s attempt to rush through abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board (rural living wage), a move that would hit the incomes of 150,000 agricultural workers in England and Wales.
Mike Walker at Country of Standard congratulated the Labour members in the Lords and in particular Jim Knight, Philip Hunt and Steve Bassam for their dogged support for rural workers and in highlighting Tory Lords behaviour, more reminiscent of Squire Frampton at Tolpuddle, a man keen to push farm workers into poverty.

It is also becoming clear that LibDem Farm Minister David Heath (Somerton & Frome) has failed to discuss the issue of abolition of the AWB with his own party, with Cornwall LibDem MP Andrew George vehemently opposing its abolition and LibDem President Tim Farron refusing to date to back the move. 

It should be noted that Farm Minister David Heath, fully supported the Agricultural Wages Board prior to his appointment last year as Farm Minister. 

As a result of Labour's action a vote by the House of Lords on the AWB’s future has to be held at the report stage at the end of February or beginning of March. 

Unite national officer for agriculture Julia Long said

“We applaud the intervention of those peers that did not want a large swathe of the agricultural workforce reduced to poverty wages.

“The government has behaved in a shambolic way in tacking on an amendment that will have a huge impact on the rural economy onto a business bill - the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bill.

“Many peers are angry at both the government’s plan to reduce rural workers’ livelihoods and the underhand manner it is being done.

“A brake has been put on the government’s pernicious proposal. There is still time to mobilise enough parliamentary support to halt the AWB’s abolition which has set agricultural workers’ pay since the second world war.”

Unite is strongly campaigning against the AWB’s abolition and said that 60 per cent of responses to the government’s consultation were in favour of retention. In its own submission, Unite had argued that supermarkets and the growers, who supply them, were behind moves to abolish the AWB in order to drive down labour costs.

Country Standard also pointed out that The Tory farming lobby had supported the establishment of a Grocery Code Adjudicator to regulate negotiation's between farmers and supermarkets, stating it was an ethical way forward, yet when it comes to farm workers they keen to see their wages slashed to the minimum. Even DEFRA accept, that cutting the AWB will effectively be taking millions out of the fragile rural economy.

LibDem Farm Minister Axes Agric Wages Board Days Before Xmas - Plunging Farm Workers Into Poverty

 

The Agricultural Question

Prime Minister:

"I'm sorry, my good man, I can do nothing for you"

LibDem Farm Minister Axes Agric Wages Board Days Before Xmas - Plunging Farm Workers Into Poverty

Huw Irranca-Davies MP, Labour’s Shadow Farming Minister, responding to the amendment tabled in the House of Lords to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, said: 

“It is typical that the Government sneaked out this announcement just hours before Parliament shuts down for Christmas, ignoring the strong views against abolition expressed in the consultation, and with no regard to the will of the Welsh Government. The Government admits that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will take £240 million out of the pockets of farm workers and rural communities over the next ten years.  

“David Cameron’s out of touch government has delivered a bitter blow to the rural economy just before Christmas and to thousands of low-paid farm workers who will be worried about their pay falling. People in the countryside need a One Nation plan to create jobs and growth, not this Government’s approach that leaves our lowest paid workers out of pocket.”

Mike Walker Country Standard said:

"David Heath LibDem Farm Minister (Somerton & Frome) once stated that the Agricultural Wages Board was vital now he his happy to go along with the Coalition of Millionaires and drive rural workers into poverty"

"Its ironic that a Liberal Farm Minister established the Agricultural Wages Board and over one hundred years later the next LibDem Farm Minister axes it"

"The AWB acted as bench mark for many rural workers jobs and was a de facto  rural living wage"

"Labour's Shadow Farming Minister Huw Irranca-Davies MP,  has worked tirelessly to retain the AWB, he recently secured with cross party and NFU support  a Grocery Code Adjudicator with real power to protect farmers from the excessive power of the supermarkets, it's a real shame that cross party and NFU ethical approach is ignored when it comes to paying farm workers a living wage"

Agric Wages Board Lobby - Living Wage 4 Rural Workers

Agricultural Wages Board - Rural Living Wage

Lobby 12 November 2012

Rural Workers - Poverty Pay

writing to encourage all readers to support Unite’s campaign and say ‘No! to Rural Poverty’ http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/save_the_awb.aspx

The Coalition Government is set to scrap the Agricultural Wages Board, the industry body that has set minimum rates of pay and conditions within agriculture since 1948.

Have you ever wondered where the salad that you buy in one of Horsham’s supermarkets are grown or where many of the ornamental plants in the garden centre come from? The answer to both questions is here in West Sussex, grown by many thousands of hard working horticultural workers.

I work in horticulture and know what a rewarding career it can be, but I am also aware that horticulture has an image problem, one based on low pay and hard manual labour. Neither of these descriptions are entirely true and here in West Sussex we have one of the most efficient and productive nursery sectors in the UK. To create a sustainable future for our industry we need to attract a new generation of horticulturalists and we won’t be helped by abolishing the Wages Board, in fact it will make things a whole lot worse, as the current negotiated minimum pay rates and scales , sick pay and holidays allowances will all be lost.

The prospect of a working environment where the only guarantees are the national minimum wage and statutory sick pay is not one to be relished and will do nothing to attract new recruits into our industry.

To take part in the consultation, and to support the retention of the Wages Board visit

www.defra.gov.uk/consult/2012/10/16/agri-wages-board/

For more information about the campaign to save the AWB email david.hide1@btinternet.com

David Hide is technical manager on a large wholesale nursery and Unite branch organiser

10 Clarence Road, Horsham

Save the AWB www.unitetheunion.org Keep farm pay national - stop the abolition of the AWB.

Defend The Agric Wages Board - Consultaion Ends 12th November

PM warned speedy Agricultural Wages Board consultation process could be ‘unlawful’

Prime minister David Cameron has been told that the government could be acting unlawfully in its unseemly haste to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) on which more than 150,000 workers rely for a decent income.

Unite, the agricultural workers union, is calling on the prime minister to extend the four week consultation period - due to close next Monday (12 November) - until 21 January 2013, so that all interested organisations can have a proper opportunity to make the case for the AWB’s retention. At stake is some £140 million in workers' wages which will, should the AWB be abolished, be retained by the employers, which include some of the biggest farm and retail outfits in the UK.

In a letter to the prime minister Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: “Our legal advisers are reviewing the extent to which the government’s approach to this consultation has been lawful.”

While the government’s support for the living wage is to be welcomed, it cannot be that while Number 10 promotes action to improve incomes, Defra is rushing through consultation on proposals that will destroy rural wages.

Unite believes that the coalition is failing in its duty of care to the historic agricultural workforce, which has created one of the most efficient agricultural economies in the developed world and that if the AWB is abolished, this will accelerate the slide into rural poverty.

Len McCluskey added: “What is happening with the consultation on the future of the AWB is anti-democratic; hundreds of thousands of rural workers and stakeholder organisations are being locked out of the consultation to the certain detriment of the people most impacted by any abolition.

“There is concern within the National Farmers Union (NFU)*, as well as Unite and other consultees, about the potential scale of the internal consultation they need, set against the deadline imposed by government.

“Concerns have been expressed to Unite by some civil society groups that their views have not been sought and that the consultees draw heavily from the large employers and retailers. For instance, why are the views of the agricultural colleges not being sought?”

Len McCluskey said that the new consultation principles included the principle of ‘digital by default’, but for rural workers this was a “wholly inadequate” process.

He said: “Internet services in rural areas are notoriously poor due to historic government under-investment, and mobile reception being notoriously unreliable.

“The imposition of ‘digital by default’ on this consultation, in particular, is being seen as a deliberate attempt to evade the views of those seeking to defend the AWB.”

Unite has pointed out that while the Westminster government wanted to abolish the AWB in England and Wales, the devolved governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland were keeping their AWBs and there was a commitment by the Welsh government to retain its AWB.

Unite is not against the modernisation of the AWB, but that rural communities are economically fragile where low wages are the norm - and to afford some protection against rural poverty was the reason that the AWB, which has it origins in the World War One, came into being in the first place.

SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS SOS

YOU CAN HELP

Email Defra NOW ! (Before deadline of 12th Novemebr) and demand that the Government retain the Agricultural Wages Board to ensure a Living Wage in Agriculture

awbconsultation@defra.gsi.gov.uk

Northern Ireland Keeps Agricultural Wages Board

O’Neill announces retention of the Agricultural Wages Board in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill MLA has announced that, following a public consultation, she has decided to retain the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) structure.

The AWB sets minimum rates of pay and conditions for workers in the agriculture and horticulture sectors, including a large proportion of migrant workers.

Making her announcement, the Minister 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.

“As I have said previously, 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.

“The AWB guarantees fair pay and conditions for agricultural workers. 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. "

In conclusion she added: “As we try to grow the economic potential of the agri-food sector in these difficult times, it is essential that workers in this industry are both protected and have the skills, not only to help the sector flourish but to encourage others to consider a career within it.”

Scotland and Wales also looks set to keep the Agricultural Wages Board, meanwhile Unite (Farm & rural workers union) continue with their campaign to maintain the Agricultural Wages Board in England.

The AWB not only sets the rate for farm workers but often acts as a bench mark for other rural workers. Presently rural workers earn on average £4,000 a year less than their urban work colleagues.

Tory Government - Raw Deal For Rural Communities - By Mary Creagh

Rural heartland -
feeling full force of ministers' mistakes

Mary Creagh Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, on the raw deal being served to rural communities by the Government.

Western Morning News, Saturday 28 July 2012

The recent dairy crisis has shown that markets alone do not guarantee a fair deal for farmers or the countryside. We are now in the longest recession for 50 years with rural communities paying a high price for the failures of this out-of-touch Government. Defra ministers talk a good game on food security, yet as the dairy crisis loomed, ministers were asleep on the job.

The race to the bottom on farm-gate prices is bad for farmers and, ultimately, bad for consumers. We need an end to one-sided contracts and the reckless behaviour of the big milk processors who are squeezing dairy farmers for all they can. Last week the Government woke up to the scale of the problem and started to bang heads together. But why did it take a milk blockade for ministers to act? Labour wants to see the Government strengthen the role of the Groceries Code Adjudicator to ensure a fair deal across the supermarket supply chain with the power to fine companies who breach the code. Yet ministers oppose giving the Adjudicator the power to fine.


There are wider problems in the economy in Devon and Cornwall, and these are tough times for rural communities and businesses. This out-of- touch Government has made the wrong choices on the economy, choking off growth and the fragile recovery. The South West did not receive a penny from the £9.4 billion promised for rail projects by the government earlier this month. Worse still, as the WMN has reported, ministers are looking to cut direct trains from Penzance to Paddington by a third under the new Great Western franchise agreement.

There is a cost of living crisis spreading across our towns and villages. Living costs in rural communities are already 10-20% higher than in urban areas. There has been a massive growth in food poverty as families struggle with higher living costs, lower wages and welfare changes. The leading food charity FareShare estimates that 16% of people within the South West are living in food poverty, unable to feed themselves on regular basis. Earlier this month, the Devon and Cornwall Food Association extended its reach from Plymouth to the whole of Devon, redistributing food to local foodbanks. Yet one of the first things the Tory-led government did was to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales. The board guarantees minimum pay and conditions for 23,500 rural workers in the South West. Axing it will take £9 million a year out of England's rural economy through lost sick and holiday pay alone. The last thing we need is a race to the bottom on wages. This will take money out of the rural High Street, local shops and pubs.

House of Commons Library research, which I commissioned, revealed families in rural areas have been disproportionately hit by the removal of the tax credit second income threshold. This protected the £545 per annum child tax credit family element for households earning less than £40,000 and helped 15% of families with children in rural areas (compared to 10% in urban areas). Rural councils, which tend to have older and less deprived populations receive lower grant allocations, spend less on social care, charge more for home care and allocate lower personal budgets than local authorities serving younger, more urban and more deprived populations. The Commission for Rural Communities reported last month that young people in rural areas face extra barriers finding work and accessing training. The rate at which young people become NEETS (young people not in education employment or training) is rising faster in rural areas than urban ones. Long term youth unemployment has more than trebled in the last year across Devon and Cornwall.

What was the Government's response to the Commission for Rural Communities? They abolished it. In the last two years, Defra ministers have failed to get a grip with the issues facing rural communities. They have cut funding for flood defences by 30% and then asked communities to come up with the cash for flood defences themselves. Their proposals to sell off the nation's forests met huge protests and they backed back down. The same happened with national nature reserves and changes to reduce environmental protection in planning law. And wild animals in circuses. It is not just Cameron and Osborne getting the big decisions wrong, and it is not just people in urban centres who are affected. It is coalition heartlands like the South West who are feeling the force of government incompetence. Rural communities deserve better.

Coalition of Millionaires vote to scrap rural minimum wage

(picture Farmers Weekly)

Coalition of Millionaires vote to scrap rural minimum wage

Tuesday 25 October, 2011

The Coalition of Millionaires has voted by majority of 77 to scrap (Conservative & Liberal democrats ) the Agricultural Wages Board which covers 150,000 agricultural workers and acts as a bench mark for thousands of other rural jobs.

From all over the UK rural workers, some dressed as scarecrows, travelled to London to lobby MPs in a bid to persuade them to back their campaign which has one objective - to maintain the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB).

Rural workers are extremely concerned at this government’s plans to abolish the AWB, a body which has supported rural workers for generations and was set up specifically to protect this vulnerable group of workers. Unite believes that this goes to show that the Tory-led government is completely out of touch with the countryside.

Unite national officer, Cath Speight, said: “According to the government’s own estimates, returning back to the statutory sick and annual leave payments alone, could potentially take over £9 million a year out of workers' pockets.

“This will be very unwelcome news to many of our members, who are already struggling to survive in the face of rising costs and higher food prices. Many have already been told by employers that should the AWB be abolished, their wages will be forced down - this is unacceptable and we can not allow this to happen.

“During this present climate, where people are worried about food production, food security and food supplies, it is astonishing that this government has chosen to attack the very workers who we rely on to maintain supplies and production.”

Unite fully supports this fight back to defend these rural workers and their communities. The union has thousands of rural members who will face a serious attack on their livelihoods if the AWB is abolished.

Country Standard co-editor Mike Walker stated:

"This is just another example of attacks upon rural workers by this Tory Government, when rural workers already earn on average £4,000 year less than city workers.

"Tory millionaire Farm minister Jim Paice knows nothing about rural low pay or poverty he spends his time in London on wages set nationally and on a big fat pension. His remarks that farm workers already covered by AWB will continue to be covered by it "for ever and a day" are simply an outright lie.

"Jim Paice states “The world has moved on. It is not the forelock-tugging yokel" yet under new proposed Tory employment legislation, if you don't tug your forelock or your just old you can be sacked".

Back The Apple Campaign - Fair Wages For Rural Workers

Labour to rebrand as "Party of the Countryside"

Labour to attempt rebrand as 'party of the countryside'

Mary Creagh to tell Labour party conference that government is vulnerable on rural affairs such as forests and planning reform

• Damian Carrington

Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 September 2011 06.30 BST

 
Mary Creagh will tell the Labour conference: 'We want strong rural communities with fair pay at their heart.' Photograph: Graham Franks/Alamy
The Labour party will make an audacious pitch on Tuesday to position itself as the party of the countryside, warning that government plans will see wages cut for adult and child workers in rural areas. The moves follows a turbulent year for the government in the shires, with a U-turn on plans to sell national forests and uproar over a radical overhaul of the planning system.

"We stand up for fairness in the countryside," Mary Creagh, shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs will tell the party's annual conference in Liverpool on Tuesday. "We want strong rural communities with fair pay at their heart."
Evoking the Tolpuddle martyrs' fight for fair farm pay in 1834, Creagh will warn against the government's desire to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, claiming that 42,000 casual workers will see an immediate cut in their pay. The AWB, founded by Labour in 1948, sets minimum wages and conditions for over 150,000 workers in England and Wales.

Its abolition will see the minimum wage of £3.05 for 14- to 16-year-olds go, says Creagh, and weaken protection for permanent workers, whose homes are often tied to their employment.

Creagh, the MP for Halifax, will acknowledge the challenge for a party whose strongholds have traditionally been in urban areas. She will say: "Labour is the party of the countryside. The first time I said that in parliament, the Tories laughed. They're not laughing now."

Creagh will also lay claim to a Labour heritage on countryside issues: "We set up the national parks in 1948. We established the green belt [and] the world's first climate change law."

She will accept that people in rural areas thought Labour had lost touch at the last election, and "voted us out". But Creagh believes the party can find success in rural areas because the issues of greatest concern to people are universal: low incomes, jobs, housing and transport.

As well as forestry and planning, she will highlight where she believes the government is vulnerable: cuts to post offices and rural bus services, delays in rural broadband roll-out, the divisive issue of badger culling and the cost of housing. She will also note the nine council seats won by Labour in the Forest of Dean, after the bungled forestry sell-off proposals.

She will argue that the Conservative party's anti-regulation instincts – Defra is undergoing its "red tape challenge" until 3 October – leave it unable to deliver the environment policies needed, and will remind the conference of the budget cut taken by Defra, the largest cut in Whitehall.

Willie Bain, a shadow Defra minister, also acknowledges a pressing electoral reason to build support in rural areas: "We need to win back seats in the south and east of England if we are to form a future government – it's a must."
A vote on the abolition of the AWB is expected before the end of 2011. "We want to make sure Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs are made to feel very uncomfortable," Creagh told the Guardian on the eve of her speech.

Another quango being abolished is the Commission for Rural Communities – axed, claims Creagh, because the government "doesn't want anyone standing up to them". She also highlighted the closing of a third quango, the Aggregates Sustainability Fund, which required quarrying companies to fund restoration work to the countryside after mineral extraction.

Barry Gardiner MP, a former Defra minister and current member of the Defra select committe, said: "The Labour party is on the side of people who are not getting a fair deal. People who work at the sharp end of society delivering the things we depend on and there's no finer example of that than people who labour in the countryside." He said Labour's pitch would only be audacious if it was aimed at major landowners and agricultural companies.

Green Light to - Child Slave Labour on British Farms

By Socialist Unity Reporter

The Government is set to abolish minimum wage rates for children working for summer jobs on farms and in the countryside. School age children (under 16) currently receive £2.98 an hour under the Agricultural Wages Board. The Government is planning to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board as part of the Public Bodies Bill currently before Parliament. Ministers claim that farm workers will be protected by the National Minimum Wage but the minimum wage does not apply to children under 16.

Labour Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh challenged the Farming Minister, Jim Paice on protection for farm workers during an exchange in the House of Commons on Thursday 30th June. She said that the Agricultural Wages Board guarantees farm workers benefits such as bereavement pay and sick pay which is roughly £180 per week for a grade 1 farm worker whereas statutory sick pay is just £81.60 a week. She told the minister that children working on farms who are not covered by the National Minimum Wage will lose their wage protection if the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished.

Speaking after the exchange in Parliament Mary Creagh said:

“Many children benefit from summer jobs in rural areas, but we need to make sure that we have fair wages for farm workers, whatever their age. The Government’s reckless decision to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, in place since 1924, will lead to a race to the bottom for some of our lowest paid workers. It is astonishing that Ministers are unaware that children will have no wage protection from the national minimum wage and have no plan to protect child workers from exploitation.”

Save Rural Britain - Lobby 9th February

SAVE RURAL BRITAIN

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Old Palace Yard, Westminster, London SW1P 3JY

Demonstration from 12.30pm, lobby from 2pm

On 22 July 2010 the coalition government announced plans to scrap the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) putting thousands of rural and agricultural workers’ pay and conditions in jeopardy.

The AWB has been in existence since the first world war and protects agricultural workers’ pay and conditions. If the AWB is removed not only will agricultural workers suffer but also their employers, the farmers. Pay bargaining would become instantly fragmented and every farmer that employs workers would have to become a negotiator overnight.

Abolition would give bad employers the opportunity to undercut wage agreements in a race to the bottom as rates sink closer to the national minimum wage. That’s why Unite is campaigning to stop the abolition of the AWB.

Come along on Wednesday 9 February 2011 and help save the AWB!

Socialist unity Blog

Lib Dems 'betray' our rural workers

Lib Dems

'betray'

our

rural workers

Tuesday 09 November 2010

by Roger Bagley in Parliament
Morning Star

Rural workers' union Unite accused treacherous Lib Dems today of plunging more people into poverty by aiding the Tories' "dogma driven destruction" of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB).

The AWB, which since 1923 has provided a degree of protection for the pay and conditions of hundreds of thousands of rural workers, was one of the shock casualties of the government's "bonfire of the quangos."

Unite national officer Ian Waddell said: "This policy is a betrayal of rural workers and a deception of the communities in which they live."

He added: "Abolition of the wages board was not in the coalition agreement.

"The Lib Dems did not stand for election on this, but they are helping implement a Conservative plan to break the wages of rural workers."

Labour MP Paul Flynn accused the "Tea-Party wing" of the Con-Dem government of setting out to demolish a whole list of quangos out of "political spite and malice."

Mr Flynn spoke out at a session of the Commons public administration committee after trade union leaders had complained to MPs about insulting comments from government ministers and an almost total lack of consultation on quango closures.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles regularly delights in making derisive comments, describing workers at these non-departmental public bodies as "form fillers and pen pushers."

Civil Service union Prospect deputy general secretary Dai Hudd also complained to the committee that junior Communities Minister Bob Neill had accused workers of "taking the taxpayer for a ride" and "living it up at taxpayers' expense."

Warning of the high financial cost of quango closures, Mr Hudd said abolition of the Audit Commission would save £50 million, but costs of redundancy and other resulting costs would probably be £200m.

He added that as many as 4,000 Prospect members faced losing their jobs as a result of quango closures.

Public service union PCS director of bargaining Geoff Lewtas said that thousands of his members also faced the axe, although it was difficult to give a precise figure since some workers would be transferred to other departments, which also faced big job cuts.

To implement its massacre of the quangos, the government is rushing the Public Bodies Bill through Parliament.

Ministers hoped it would receive its second reading in the Lords last night, despite some opposition.