Is this immigration to the Thetford area legal? Who are the gangmasters?

On one side heading north is a queue of commuters, lone drivers in their empty people carriers, waiting to get on to the ring road. On the other side hurrying south is a succession of ageing minibuses, their cargo of smoking migrants crammed into seats behind tinted windows.

Felicity Lawrence, the Guardian 10th January 2005. Guardian Unlimited

Migrancy into the UK

There are a number of different roads that lead into the UK's labour market. Citizens of established EU member states (the old EU-15 countries) enjoy with us a common and free labour market. Portugal is one such country, the UK another.

Citizens of the new EU member-states that joined in 2004 (the EU-10 or CEEC states) will share the same rights as the Portuguese migrants by 2011. For now, they are allowed to come to work in the UK, but are requested to register with the UK government as employed workers for at least 12 months before they can receive state-benefits. These new migrants include the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Slovaks.

There are other roads into the UK labour market. An old favourite in rural England is the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) that allowed farmers to hire foreign labour seasonally. Despite protest from some employers, the quota of SAWS migrants has been reduced in recent years. They are however, often replaced by the above EU migrant labour, often hired by contract labour agencies.

Other immigrant workers usually need UK work permit visas. Again, quotas are being reduced by the government despite opposition from employer organisations. The policy seems to be to use EU labour whenever possible, and to reduce non-EU migrant labour. What I find personally interesting is that increasingly, both Conservative and Labour politicians, when they refer to immigration, refer only to policies that concern non-EU immigrants, as though EU migrants are not immigrants at all.

The Gang masters

Read this .pdf document prepared by the DTI, for Lithuanian migrant workers, you can see that it is expected that the CEEC migrant workers will be working for a temporary work agency. A significant proportion of the migrant workers are not employed directly. Instead, they work for these contract labour agencies, who fulfill contracts with food producers, packers, and other industries. They specialise in supplying cheap, flexible, and available manpower. Contracted manpower is becoming big business, and has been behind the success of some lucrative food companies. However, there are reports that many of the agencies are behaving badly, and all too often, outside of the law. There have been many cases - workers working below the minimum wage, for above the maximum hours, illegal wage deductions, the failure to pass on revenue to the taxman, workers being threatened, or beaten, etc. Temporary Work Agencies often supply accommodation and transport for the migrants. I suspect that it is common practice for some of these agencies to deduct rent and transport costs at wage source. Effectively, by doing so, they can get away with effectively paying migrants below the National minimum wage. I was told by one group of Lithuanians, that they were paying £50 per week each for 10 of them to share a house in Thetford. The name Gangmasters is often applied to these kind of employers. The above Guardian source is the latest investigation into the dealings of some of these agencies.

Not only are workers often overworked and underpaid, but concern has been expressed over poor health and safety conditions. Trade Unions have been expressing concern. At its worse, it was this industry that was responsible for the Morcambe Bay Tragedy. Guardian journalists have previously reported a link between the victims of the Morcambe Bay tragedy, and gangmaster operations in the Thetford area. The worst gang masters are also accused of aiding illegal immigration into the UK, as illegal immigrants are easier to exploit. The illegals usually enjoy the worst conditions. The Morcambe Bay tragedy was one example of those worse conditions.

The Gangmaster Act 2004

In response to concerns over the behaviour of some agencies, the UK government has started introducing stages of a new Gangmaster Act, that aims to address some of the problems outlined above. When the Act is fully into force, agencies will need to licensed.

The Good and the Bad

Many locals are of the opinion that the migration has been very bad for the area. Some argue that a shortage of local labour should have lead to an increase in wage levels, as employers competed for the diminished workforce. This has not happened, instead, big business has encouraged migration of labour into the area, bringing with it low pay, language difficulties, and bad employment practices. Additionally, it is argued that migrants, on low wages, are more likely to be in need of support out of the public purse. Therefore, it is suggested, the only people to gain from the present situation are the employers and big business.

However, the employers of migrant labour argue that they could not have adapted to the new market forces without the flexibility and availability of migrant manpower. Even if they could have afforded to raise wages, they suggest that there was still not enough available manpower in the area. A raise in wage levels would have made them uncompetitive in the Market, and would have severely damaged agriculture and the food industry. Some economists suggest that migrant labour into the UK has been responsible for the uninterrupted continual economic growth that we have all enjoyed since 1997. The spectre of inflation that has cut past economic booms short has been curtailed by the availability of labour provided by the migrants. As political parties increasingly flirt with stricter immigration control, so economists and industrialists warn that this would be to the cost of the British economy. This was concern was also highlighted by the CBI during the recent General Election campaign

Another criticism of the migration is that the sudden growth of the town has put enormous pressure on resources, particularly on housing, healthcare, and on education. These resources, services, and local authorities also have the additional burden of coping with unfamiliar cultures and languages, without any previous experience of dealing with migration issues. Thetford had already been identified as a town with problems before the arrival of the migrants, and now the focus had been moved to migrant issues. Housing is of particular concern, as many 'agents' are cramming migrants into overcrowded conditions. Migrant houses sometimes contain as many as three families living under the same roof. Typical rents for migrants in Thetford are £50 to £70 per week each person, to share a house with several other migrants and tenants. New arrivals often find themselves squeezed into such accommodation with strangers.

Recognition of Thetford's growth has recently resulted in the award of Growth Point Status. Thetford is predicted to be one of the fastest growing areas in the East of England over the next 15 years.