The fruit pickers were hired under the government’s seasonal worker program and say they were offered work for six months. But less than two months after arriving, they were told they were no longer needed and ordered to book flights home. Workers said they had quit their jobs to come to the UK and have been left thousands of pounds in debt after borrowing money to cover their flights and fees to third-party job brokers. They also face high airfares for rescheduling return trips. Some of the workers who arrived in September have already left. Others who cannot afford tickets have been ordered to leave the farm where they worked in Kent – ​​which supplied supermarkets including Tesco, the Co-op and M&S – or face being ‘blacklisted’ from future jobs. “If you ignore this email and we don’t get a response … we will have to cancel your visas and blacklist you, unfortunately,” said an email sent to a group of workers by the AG Recruitment job office on November 4. One worker, Sajit*, said he sold his shop to come to the UK and still had more than £3,000 of debt to pay off – about a year’s salary in Nepal. “We were told that six months will be good money for us, but we get less money than in Nepal. If we go back, we don’t have a job,” he said. The Observer spoke to 12 people who arrived to pick apples and other fruit in early September and have now been told to go home early by AG Recruitment, one of four official operators of the seasonal horticulture scheme. According to information, 60 workers from Nepal are affected. Early termination means many are now scrambling to find other jobs to help pay off the debts they’ve accumulated. Some say they have applied to restaurants and shops but were turned down because of their visa type. Others say they asked AG Recruitment to be sent to other farms but were told there were no placements available. Strict visa rules prevent them from working in other sectors or on farms unrelated to their original sponsor. Apples at Tesco. the supermarket says it is aware of the “wider complexities” in the supply chain. Photo: Stephen Barnes/Food and Drink/Alamy With no way to work, they face returning home in worse shape than when they arrived. Manish*, whose income supports his children and wife in Nepal, said he had taken on nearly £5,000 in debt and had to pay more than half. He will probably start accruing significant interest and fear that the debt will take years to pay off. “I don’t think I will take my job back to Nepal… If I come back to Nepal in four or five years, I can repay the loan,” he said. Even those workers who did not seek the services of recruitment agents paid around £1,500 each for air tickets and visa fees before setting foot in the UK. One said that while he had almost managed to pay off his debts, he could not afford the airline fees, which could be as high as £200, to change his return flight, which he had booked for next year. The findings will fuel concerns about the treatment of migrant workers under the UK’s seasonal worker scheme, which was launched to tackle labor shortages in food production and allows people to work on UK farms for up to six months. Under the scheme, they cannot stay long-term, claim benefits or bring their families. The number of seasonal work visas issued by the Home Office each year has increased since they began in 2019, from 2,500 in the first year to around 40,000 in 2022, including many from countries outside Europe. But the system has been marred by claims of exploitation, with reports earlier this year alleging that some workers from Nepal and Indonesia were being charged high recruitment fees by third-party labor brokers, putting them at risk of debt enforcement. Visas for up to six months are offered for migrant workers. Photo: Bloomberg/Getty Immigrant rights experts say better protections are needed for seasonal workers, including offering guaranteed hours and allowing them to seek other types of work when farm jobs aren’t available. “It is not fair to expect them to pay the financial cost of immigration without real job guarantees during the six months they are allowed to work in the UK,” said Kate Roberts, head of policy at Focus on Labor Exploitation (Flex). . “There needs to be protection against these loopholes in the system.” The fees paid by the fruit pickers whose placements have just ended were largely in cash to Nepal-based labor brokers who are not associated with AG Recruitment. The workers say they paid because agents guaranteed them visas and a place in the seasonal worker program. AG Recruitment said it was not aware the workers had been charged. “We make it extremely clear both in our hiring process and in all of our contracts that it is against the law to ask any employee to pay for work,” the company said. He also said he intended to provide six months of work, but that the nature of seasonal work meant this could not be guaranteed, adding that workers were informed of this directly in Zoom discussions during the recruitment process. Documents seen by the Observer show the workers were initially told they would be coming to the UK to work on a farm for six months. But about 10 days before they started, they were told that this placement had been canceled and that they would now be going to a different farm. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The workers, who had already bought flights and visas, were told the new placement would be for two months instead of six, but say they thought they would be transferred to another farm after it ended. Emails from the AG show they were assured there would be “plenty of work” and the opportunity to earn “good money”. The workers then traveled to the UK and began working on a farm run by the Gaskains in Faversham, Kent. But when those shifts ended less than two months later, they were told by the AG that there was nowhere else to go. AG Recruitment said that while it had arranged four to six months of work for the fruit pickers before they arrived in the UK, “extreme circumstances” meant it could not transfer them to another agricultural employer as planned. He said the reasons for this include the war in Ukraine which is delaying visa issuance and the hot summer which has adversely affected crops. Workers questioned why they were hired near the end of the season and said they would not have come if they had known they would only have two months of work. “They have to know the season is going to end. We did not understand this as [it was] the first time we were coming here,” said Kamal*, who plans to sell some family land to cover the debts he ran up to come to work in the UK. “Why did they hire us at the end of the season? It would have been better if they hadn’t hired us at all.” Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the Center for Employment Rights, said terminating the workers’ jobs early would have left them in “complete shock”. “If they manage to buy new flights in time to avoid eviction, that wipes out most of what they’ve earned. But if they can’t, they risk sleeping rough and working illegally on the black market, where they are completely vulnerable,” he said. In a statement, AG Recruitment said it was conducting an internal review. He said he was providing welfare to the workers, adding that while they were disappointed that no further work was available, they were “happy with their earnings”. “We sincerely regret that we were unable to place everyone who wanted to work, despite our best efforts,” said Douglas Amesz, the company’s chief executive. In relation to the blacklisting threat, the company said workers had to “maintain communication with their sponsor in accordance with immigration rules” and could be blacklisted from future employment with the AG if they did not . It added that it was not responsible for the costs incurred by the workers to change the return tickets. Gaskains, which supplies many UK supermarkets, said it was aware further work was planned for fruit pickers and believed the AG had “tried hard” to find some “when current requests for staff were cancelled”. Charles Gaskain, the company’s director, said it was “a shame that such a changing season … has so unusually created this situation”. Tesco, which buys apples from Gaskains and has previously connected with other farms recruiting workers through AG Recruitment, said it was aware of “wider complexities” in the seasonal worker supply chain and was investigating. The Co-op and M&S, which listed Gaskains on their supplier lists for 2022, said they had not received fruit from the farm during the affected period and it was not a current supplier. The Home Office said: “The seasonal worker route has been running for three years and every year improvements are being made to stop exploitation.”

  • Names have been changed