Answers to the questions about illegal employment and conditions for casual workers

1 Earlier this week.
2 For illegally employing and exploiting 40 Bulgarians in Cornwall. What is illegal is not the employment of these workers but their working conditions.
3 That the vegetables these people were picking ended up in branches of Tesco and Morrisons, (so these supermarket giants were involved through getting their vegetable supplies through the exploitation of workers).
4 The reporter says they are ‘all too familiar and that they have even been fictionalised’. (There have been several factual accounts of this exploitation of foreign labour and some fictional, such as Two Caravans about Ukrainian causal workers).
5 That they lived in caravans that were really overcrowded.
6 In one case 7 people were trying to sleep in a 6-berth caravan; in others grown men were trying to sleep in cots (ie beds intended for young children).
7 That they weren’t paid, so had no money, in some cases some had not been paid for 34 days. (The newspaper article makes it clear that their pay had been withheld = held back).
8 That they were trying to survive on rejected potatoes that one farmer had let them have (= allowed them to have)and courgettes from the fields where they were supposed to be harvesting. They are described as scavenging for food.
9 When a supply-chain involves subcontracting – (if there is a series of sub-contracts no single organisation appears directly responsible for anything).
10 They are all names of the three companies who had been involved in the subcontracting of this farmwork.
11 He had subcontracted the workers to another gangmaster of a firm called Elite (of Elite Labour Services).
12 It was he who had the contract to supply flexible casual labour to a big farming and pack-house complex called Southern England Farms.
13 Southern England Farms
14 That they expected suppliers to audit their supply chain and to behave responsibly and to check all these things.
15 That they supported the introduction of the Gangmaster Licensing Act, (showing this as evidence that they were in favour of stamping out (=eliminating) such malpractices).They also pointed out that this illegal situation had been discovered because of the existence of the GLA, so proving their concern for this exploitation.
16 The Bulgarian Embassy.
17 To tip someone off.
18 (Critics know this is happening) ‘a great deal‘.
19 Some doubt, scepticism, or some disbelief, some impatience at this state of affairs, and a sense that the supermarkets need to do better than this. The phrase can also convey encouragement, but does not do so here!
20 This kind of abuse (which she says is endemic at the bottom of the (supply) chain).
21 That it is not good enough to wait until you are caught out – that organisations such as the supermarkets should be more careful it does not happen in the first place.
22 The Latvian director of Baltic Work Team.
23 Last week.
24 He denied everything.
25 His licence.
26 Yes, in February this year.
27 For abuses of employment law.
27 Because he was allowed the right to appeal against having his licence taken away – he was allowed to ‘sort himself out’ ‘get his paperwork in order’.
28 This time his licence was revoked with immediate effect (= at once, straight away, without delay).
29 Because it is a grievous case of abuse

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