Fruit and vegetables on UK supermarket shelves are harvested in dire conditions by migrant workers.
This page provides more information about the situation for migrant workers, and Ethical Consumer's campaign work to encourage supermarkets to take action.
UK supermarkets depend on the regions of Almería and Huelva in southern Spain to supply them with fresh fruit and vegetables. But for over two decades, farm owners in these regions have been violating the rights of migrant workers who pick this fresh produce.
Eight out of nine basic workers’ rights are being broken in southern Spain, from forced labour to unsafe working conditions.
Farm owners routinely refuse to pay legal minimum wages, penalise workers for taking toilet breaks, fire those who try to unionise, and sexually assault and harass workers. One week a worker might be working excessively long hours in the scorching heat, to find themselves without work the next week.
In 2023 we published a major report outlining the widespread workers’ rights abuses in UK supermarkets’ Spanish supply chains
Working conditions in Huelva “routinely” amount to forced labour, according to the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Workers are regularly recruited under grossly misleading contracts and then face barriers to leaving. In 2019 the European branch of La Via Campesina reported that there were, “Numerous reports of passport retention and late delivery of final salary payments, pay slips and work certificates, given only upon boarding the bus to return home, to prevent the “escape” of seasonal workers.”
In 2019 ten women in Huelva filed a lawsuit claiming they had been trafficked, assaulted and exploited while picking strawberries in Huelva. EuroNews interviewed the ten women: “They talked about not getting paid and going hungry, to the point of searching for food in garbage bins. They spoke of forced prostitution and used the word “slaves” multiple times to describe their time on the farm, and said that coming to Spain had destroyed their lives.”
Workers in both Almeria and Huelva repeatedly report being refused the right to join unions. In Almeria, union busting and strike breaking is common, and in Huelva workers are unable to unionise due to the nature of their contracts.
Workers have reported aggressive and blatant strike-breaking, being fired for strike involvement, and even being hit by the vehicle of a company manager while picketing.
The fact workers are likely to move regularly means that they may not understand their union rights and makes forming and maintaining unions challenging. The temporary nature of their employment and most contracts allows employers to treat them as ‘disposable’, and leaves the workers feeling unable to demand better conditions.
Many workers face consistently gruelling conditions. Workers describe working long days with just a 30 minute break in extreme heat. Workers have also reported that some farms have rules prohibiting them from carrying water in the greenhouses, despite the high temperatures, allegedly on the grounds of health and safety concerns.
In both 2019 and 2021 workers died due to exposure to agricultural chemicals in greenhouses. Workers have reported being made to keep working while chemicals are sprayed in the greenhouses, and even having to eat lunch inside the greenhouses while chemicals are sprayed.
Workers are regularly denied access to adequate medical care.
A worker in Almeria, “Hosein”, told Ethical Consumer in 2019 that he was told to start cleaning the channels on the roof of the greenhouse without any protections and where wires cut and scratched his hands and wrists, leaving scars. He says that he was sanctioned when he complained.
“It’s like being in a circus. I have nothing to protect me, no helmet, no safety harness, no special shoes,” he said.
Extensive evidence shows that living wages are not paid in either Almeria or Huelva. Many workers report that they are paid far below minimum wage, particularly those who are undocumented.
“Lamine”, originally from Senegal, has worked in Almeria for over 20 years. He told Ethical Consumer in May 2019, “The companies are constantly trying to reduce wages. There are a few places, not many, who pay the minimum wage,” he said, but those that do often just “take it from somewhere else,” for example charging workers for travel provided by farms.
Unions and workers report that companies hide the abuse by falsifying time sheets, meaning that they also don’t have to pay social security that reflects workers’ true hours.
In both regions contracted or reasonable hours are said to be being breached routinely on some farms.
One worker in Almeria told Ethical Consumer he was expected to work up to 30 days each month, and other workers have reported being denied a day off.
In both regions, workers and unions have stated that overtime is not compensated at a premium rate. Several workers report not even being paid for overtime hours at all – it was just expected that they would work one or two hours extra per day than stipulated on the contract.
In Huelva, migrant workers may be returned to Morocco if they do not meet the required yield, forcing them to work “obligatory overtime” to avoid deportation.
In both regions, multiple workers have reported discrimination, including racism, discriminatory recruitment and firings due to unionisation and illness.
Recruitment agencies in Morocco target women who are between the ages of 25-45 and have dependent children – on the basis that it makes them more likely to return home after the season.
In practice, this means that they target women who are particularly at risk of abuse. “It is a rigged system,” says Alicia Navascues from campaign group Mujeres 24. ”They are deliberately looking for those who are cheap and vulnerable to do this work [...] who only understand Arabic, cannot understand their contracts written in Spanish or claim their rights.”
A worker told the Guardian in 2019, “I asked if my husband could get a job too but I was told they wanted women. Now I realise it was because they knew they could exploit us easily.”
Another worker says, “The fact that the Moroccan women cannot speak the language means that they are at the bottom of the heap”. She says Moroccan women are given more difficult jobs than Spanish or Romanian women, because of their nationality.
Several women workers have reported being raped, and pressured into having sex in exchange for food and water. Workers have also been fired for refusing sexual advances of managers and threatened with deportation.
In July 2021, Al Jazeera interviewed sixteen Moroccan women working in Huelva. One worker, “Hadiya”, stated: “If a man likes a female employee, he harasses her. That’s just how it is.” She also testified that managers had repeatedly asked her for sex.
NGOs believe that sexual assault and harassment are chronically underreported.
Female workers also accuse farm management of using sexist language and insults.
While some workers have contracts, others wait by the side of the road in the morning in the hope that farm management will drive by looking to pick up workers for the day. This serves as a disposable workforce, making it possible for management to fire workers who speak out against exploitation working conditions.
Many workers “do not know if they will be working 8 days or 3 days, they can be dismissed from one day to the other.”
In July 2021 “Pablo” told Ethical Consumer that he worked for the same company in Almeria for eight hours per day, six days per week but did not receive the fixed contract. “They never gave me a fixed contract, even after three years. I don’t know why they haven’t called me back to work this year.”
Many workers are also undocumented, meaning that they have to depend on uncontracted labour.
In Almeria, some workers have described being shouted at and verbally abused. Footage has emerged from several greenhouses of verbal and physical intimidation and threatening behaviour.
In Huelva, degradation and abuse appears to be widespread. Reports amount to a culture of punishment and control on some farms.
Workers are denied basic necessities by management, such as going to the toilet. A female worker told Ethical Consumer that they were “told to go at the side of the greenhouse or among the plants”, because supervisors didn’t want them taking the time to walk to the toilets.
Workers can be paid less or even fired if management thinks they are working too slow. Failing to pack boxes in the ‘right’ way can result in management knocking the boxes from workers’ hands and making them start again.
Up to 15,000 people live in settlements in Almeria and Huelva. The inhabitants live in dwellings made of cardboard, plastic from the greenhouses and metal sheets. They are often several kilometres away from piped water and have no electricity or adequate sanitation. UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has condemned conditions in Huelva. “I met with workers living in a migrant settlement in conditions that rival the worst I have seen anywhere in the world,” he stated in 2020.
Workers live in settlements like these for a number of reasons. Factors often include: lack of documentation; lack of income for rent; a lack of available housing; and/or local landlords being unwilling to rent to migrants. To make matters worse, the local government is increasingly evicting inhabitants from settlements located nearer to the cities where tourists might see them, forcing workers into more remote areas.
The scale and severity of abuses that workers face have been recognised by experts across Europe, including in the UN.
“For years, authorities and employers in southern Spain have been content to sit back and watch as migrant workers endure the most horrific, inhumane working conditions,” says the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Olivier de Schutter. “I urge supermarkets to end their complicity in this abuse and address the issue head on.”
The UK imports more fresh produce from Spain than from any other country, and most of this ends up on supermarket shelves. Supermarkets heavily source strawberries, tomatoes and peppers from southern Spain, where rights abuses are widespread.
There are a number of immediate steps supermarkets should take to improve the effectiveness of their supply chain policies:
Do any existing sustainability initiatives, from grievance mechanisms to organic certification, result in protections for workers? We reviewed 23 different schemes and pieces of legislation that claim to support workers’ rights in Spain, and assesses their strengths and weaknesses
Ethical Consumer has been reporting on issues for migrant workers in southern Spain since 2019.
This has included:
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