Unions split over Agricultural Wages Board abolition

As the abolition of the Agriculture Wages Board nears completion due to a vote in the House of Commons today, the National Farmers' Union has called on MPs to continue with plans to scrap what it calls the 'out-dated board' which is responsible for setting minimum rates for farm wages.

NFU Deputy President Meurig Raymond said the AWB abolition was 'necessary and correct' as the era for a wages board was over.

"The AWB, while appropriate in the era it was established, has now been superseded by modern-day developments such as the national minimum wage.

"Agriculture is the last remaining industry to have a wages board, leaving it totally out of step with the rest of the UK workforce, including others in the rural economy. This makes the decision to abolish it right and proper and will bring agriculture alongside other 21st century industries."

Plans to abolish the board were drawn up by a statutory panel announced by the government in July 2010, but Shadow farm minister Huw Irranca-Davies said it will be a blow to the agricultural economy.

"The Government admits that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will take £240 million out of the pockets of farm workers over the next ten years.

"David Cameron’s out of touch government has delivered a bitter blow to the rural economy... People in the countryside need a One Nation plan to create jobs and growth, not this Government’s approach that leaves our lowest paid workers out of pocket."

Activists for the trade union Unite said they will be delivering their message of support for the board which it said 'protects the incomes of 150,000 agricultural workers.'

On Friday, Unite members lobbied the president of the Liberal Democrats, Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron's constituency surgery on the government plans which Unite, the largest union in the country, warns will bring poverty wages to the countryside.

Unite national officer for agriculture Julia Long said: "Tim Farron is being lobbied as he is president of the Liberal Democrats that could scupper this retrograde step being promoted by their coalition partners.

"The crunch vote on the Agricultural Wages Board is 16 April – when MPs vote on whether to maintain the board which has been effective in the last 65 years in protecting the incomes of some of the lowest paid workers in the country.

"Unite will be campaigning strongly in the run-up to the vote to retain the Agricultural Wages Board. Supermarkets and the growers, who supply them, are behind the Agricultural Wages Board’s abolition proposal as they want to drive down workers’ wages to poverty levels.”

The union has said that 60 per cent of responses to the government’s consultation on the Agricultural Wages Board’s future were in favour of its retention.

But the NFU has consistently called for its abolition which they said it generating additional administrative burden.

"In particular, forcing a one-size-fits-all approach is unquestionably out-of-step for a farming industry that has seen increasingly significant variation in fortunes across sectors and across regions. The irrelevance of the AWB has been recognised in Parliamentary debates. There remains no fundamental argument why agriculture should be treated differently from any other business sector and why the National Minimum Wage structure should not prevail.

"It is disappointing that scaremongering about the impact of the AWB abolition continues from some quarters. In reality, the vast majority of farmers and workers are already negotiating their own agreements over and above the minimum terms and conditions set out in the Agricultural Wages Order. Market dynamics already dictate pay rates and this would continue after abolition.

"Indeed, demand for workers and skills in farming are expected to increase faster than in other areas of the economy.

"The latest myth to be touted relates to children working on farm. Drawing analogies between the exploitation of child labour in agriculture on a global basis to abolishing the AWB is nonsense – child labour without the AWB will be subject to the same controls as in all other UK sectors.

"Simple economics point to higher rather than lower wages in the long term. When adding in the savings to the public purse that abolition will deliver to the increased flexibility that AWB abolition will allow for both workers and farmers, it is clear that intervention in the farm labour market is no longer justified or beneficial – for all concerned."