Cross-border cases, where legal matters straddle different jurisdictions, are always a challenge.
One such case involves a group of Indonesian nationals who allege that they were victims of human trafficking, debt bondage, and modern slavery when they went to work in the United Kingdom to pick fruit and vegetables in the wake of Brexit, the country’s exit from the European Union.
Many of the workers were early recipients of the U.K.’s seasonal workers visa, which was piloted in 2019 and rolled out in the coming years, ostensibly to fill the labor vacuum created by Brexit in 2020 which meant that the U.K. could no longer easily recruit seasonal workers from the EU and had to look further afield to countries like Indonesia and Nepal.
Almost immediately, however, problems began, when it became clear that the visa, the workers’ expectations, and promises of wealth picking fruit in the U.K. had not been properly thought through by the U.K. government.
One of the main issues was the length of the visa, which was set at six months, after which workers would have to return to their home countries. This made it sound as if they would be able to work for a full half year, returning home with six months’ wages which were projected to be thousands of British pounds – or a small fortune in the workers’ home countries.
However, when the workers arrived at farms across the U.K. to pick fruit such as cherries, apples and strawberries, it emerged that harvest seasons and the length of the visa did not align, particularly for workers arriving later in the harvest season.
Strawberry picking for example, only took place for a few months before all the fruit had been harvested, meaning that workers then needed to move to other farms at their own expense or return to Indonesia sooner than planned.
Some workers also alleged that they were sacked almost immediately for not meeting unrealistic fruit picking targets, which often required them to pick tons of fruit every hour. To make matters worse, the majority of workers had no experience working in the agricultural sector, which requires skill and experience in order to meet zealous targets.
The situation came to a head when a number of workers refused to return to Indonesia when their visas expired, claiming that they were heavily in debt in their home country – having taken loans from loan sharks to pay for the upfront costs of their visas, passports, medical checks, and other expenses needed to travel to the U.K. – effectively landing them in debt bondage.
What does U.K. law say about all of this?
According to the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), the U.K. agency responsible for investigating labor exploitation, and which has now launched an investigation into the seasonal workers’ scheme, “a licensing holder must not charge a fee to a worker for any work-finding services.”
However, there is a legal difference between “fees,” or paying a recruitment agency to secure work, and “costs” like travel and medical checks. While the paying of fees by workers to a recruitment agency is illegal (and should be paid to the agency by the employer), “costs” may be paid by workers as long as they are “voluntary” – although one could argue that is it unlikely that a worker, hoping for lucrative work in the U.K. or elsewhere, would refuse to pay such costs, raising the question of how “voluntary” it really is.
“Additional goods or services must be optional and cannot be discriminated against if not taken up,” GLAA legislation continues, which sounds reasonable in principle but in practice means that workers who do not pay for services are likely to lose out on the possibility of work abroad.
One of the Indonesian workers who went to the U.K. has now taken the Home Office to task over the half-baked scheme, alleging that he was a victim of human trafficking and that he thought that he would be able to work legally in the U.K. for a full two years.
There was no such two-year visa available, although the worker alleged that this was what was promised to him in Indonesia – and this again raises the legal question of who is to blame for the debacle faced by the Indonesian workers in the U.K.
Was it the legal responsibility of the U.K. government to ensure that workers had not been made false promises in Indonesia or the fault of the Indonesian agencies tasked with recruiting them who also, it seems, had not understood the length of U.K. harvest seasons or perhaps the mechanics of extending a seasonal workers visa once on British soil?
Who was responsible for checking the robustness of the process between Indonesia and the U.K. and ensuring that no exploitation of workers took place, at any point during their recruitment and employment journey?
In 2022 alone, some 1,454 Indonesian workers traveled to the U.K. as part of the seasonal workers scheme according to U.K. government data, before the U.K. froze recruitment from Indonesia and Nepal in 2023 when concerns were raised about exploitative practices.
Recruitment started again in 2024, although the Home Office challenge and the GLAA investigation are still underway.
Whatever the outcome of either case, it is undoubtedly the workers who will continue to suffer and who remain saddled with huge debts, persistent requests for payment from loan sharks and fears of returning home with nothing.