Migrant women working on British farms under the Seasonal Worker Scheme (SWS) report suffering sexual harassment, feeling like “slaves” and being given lower-paid roles than men on the scheme.
Workers and experts alike have long warned that the SWS, which was introduced in 2019 to address shortages in the agricultural labour market, may be facilitating exploitation. Despite this, Labour has this year renewed the scheme for another five years.
A new briefing by us at Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX), a charity working to end human trafficking in the UK, has laid bare the gendered nature of many of the problems arising from the scheme.
