Even Margaret Thatcher accepted the argument that farmworkers were in a difficult position to bargain, so she saved the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) when getting rid of the other Wages Boards. She was following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill, who stated at the establishment of the original Wages Boards in 1909, “it is a national evil that any class of Her Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions…….where you have what we call the sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining …..where these conditions prevail you have both a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”
The AWB’s main function was to agree decent wages between national representatives of the workers and the employers, to provide a decent and respectable return. Farmers and farmworkers liked the Board because by providing set agreements and rates without individual negotiation they did not have to worry about bargaining. the AWB also dealt with issues relating to tied cottaging and skill structure rewards.
In the early 2000s, moves by the NFU and Fresh Produce Consortium to scrap the AWB were resisted by the Labour government with the Lib Dems also swearing they would never abolish it. Fast forward to 2011 and the Lib Dems backed their coalition Tory partners Bill to do just that! In early 2012, the government’s impact assessment stated that the abolition would mean £250 million would be removed from the rural economy. Labour and trade union activists, including one of the co-authors of this piece, lobbied the Lib Dems leader, Tim Farron, at his Cumbrian home surgery. He virtually laughed them out. The AWB was abolished without a proper Commons vote.
The Lords, at least, offered a proper discussion with Labour opposing, sadly unsuccessfully, an abolition amendment in the Employment Bill. Its inclusion in such a Bill was intended to avoid a challenge by the Welsh Assembly, led by Labour. This in fact failed as the Supreme Court decided Wales had a right to make up its own mind and with Scotland and Northern Ireland having both decided to continue with their AWBs, then only England has no AWB.
Unite warned that without an AWB, English workers would lose out heavily. So it has proven, especially for the young who in England are only covered by the rules governing the national minimum wage which is just £4.35 an hour for under 18s and £6.15 for those aged 18-20 and £7.70 from 21-24 years old. In Wales all young agricultural workers 16 to 24 ages receive £7.70 an hour.
This means a 17-year old agricultural worker in Wales working 40 hours a week will earn £308 a week, while his English counterpart will earn £174 — a whopping £134 a week less. The difference if you are aged 19 is lower but still corresponds to £62 a week.
In Scotland where Unite continues to put the case for better pay on the AWB the situation is better than anywhere else as all agricultural workers are now being paid £8.21 an hour.
Sadly, the situation facing English agricultural workers might be about to worsen as since the AWB abolition the principal protection has come from the EU Working Time Directive, which sets the standard on the length of the working day. Documents seen before the general election revealed that the Tories were considering deviating from some EU environmental regulations and workers’ right.
The Withdrawal Act 2020 that agreed that Britain would leave the EU on January 31, has no guarantees about enshrining European labour legislation into British law.
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