Delay to the abolition of wages board welcomed by union

The controversial move, which unions say will hit the incomes of 150,000 agricultural workers in England and Wales, will mean a delay to the legislation which aims to scrap the board.

The Unite union welcomed the moves by those peers that showed ‘dissent’ at the committee stage on Wednesday to the Government’s amendment to scrap the AWB.

Had peers not moved to block it the amendment would have gone through “on the nod”

Now a vote by the House of Lords on the AWB’s future has to be held at the report stage at the end of February or beginning of March.

Unite national officer for agriculture Julia Long said: “We applaud the intervention of those peers that did not want a large swathe of the agricultural workforce reduced to poverty wages.

“The Government has behaved in a shambolic way in tacking on an amendment that will have a huge impact on the rural economy on to a business bill – the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.

“Many peers are angry at both the Government’s plan to reduce rural workers’ livelihoods and the underhand manner it is being done.

“A brake has been put on the Government’s pernicious proposal. There is still time to mobilise enough parliamentary support to halt the AWB’s abolition which has set agricultural workers’ pay since the Second World War.”

Unite is strongly campaigning against the AWB’s abolition and said that 60 per cent of responses to the Government’s consultation were in favour of retention. In its own submission, Unite had argued that supermarkets and the growers, who supply them, were behind moves to abolish the AWB in order to drive down labour costs.

However, many in Government say the board is arcane and needs to be scrapped. The National Farmers’ Union is among the organisations backing the moves to scrap it.