THE scrapping of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) will create a poverty-stricken ‘feudal’ workforce, a union has warned.
In its submission on the consultation on the AWB’s future, Unite claimed the impetus to abolish the AWB in England and Wales was coming from employers and supermarkets at the expense of the incomes of the 150,000 land workers.
Unite, which has been highly critical of the four-week consultation period, called on the AWB to be retained and said its abolition could be in breach of the UK’s obligations under international law to promote collective bargaining. It also hit out at the membership of the Farming Regulation Task Force which recommended abolition.
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