JAMIE – NOT HIS REAL NAME – WORKS IN A MEAT PROCESSING PLANT IN WALES. HE SPOKE TO SC COOK ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE WORKING AT THE FACTORY, LOW PAY AS AN AGENCY WORKER AND HOW IT HAS OPENED HIS EYES TO BOTH THE VALUE OF HIS LABOUR AND HIGH LEVELS OF EXPLOITATION, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO MIGRANT WORKERS.
By SC Cook.
So what do you do there?
So the factory is made up of the abattoir – cows and sheep – and then the areas where the animals are chopped up basically, and the bones taken out and then packaged. I’m the part where they’re de-boning the beef.
And I’m in the cleaning team, so when everyone’s cutting up all the cow, I’m sweeping up the floor and stuff…picking up… it’s fucking disgusting….I’m picking up all joints and bones and guts and all that sort of shit.
When the production line finishes, we have to clean all the floor and the lines so that when they come back from their break, it’s all clean for them to resume work. We’ll be doing this for at least eight or nine hours with one forty minute break. It’s hard dirty work, man. And it’s very cold in there as well. I commute about an hour and ten minutes by public transport.
And what is the workforce like?
There’s Portuguese workers, Bulgarian workers, Polish, Irish, Welsh, English, Romanians and Indonesian workers.
Tell me about the pay and conditions
Well I’m on agency and I’m quite annoyed with the agency to be honest because I’ve worked my arse ass off the last few months and every week I’ve had a text on a Sunday saying if I’m working the following week.
I mean, I have always been aware of zero contracts. But when you experience a zero hour contract, you really see that it only benefits one person, and that’s the employer.
They can throw you away when they want and they know you’re desperate and they know there’s 20 people behind you that are desperate. It’s disgusting that it’s allowed to happen.
They pay you weekly there the most I earned was £230 in one week and you know council tax is £120 where I live, gas, electricity. But around £230 is the maximum, normally it’s about £190 – £200.
Is that on an hourly rate then?
Yeah, I’m on about £8.50 and the workers that are employed by the company there on about £12.
Right, so your agency is creaming off about £3.50 an hour?
Yeah. Yeah. There’s no other option than to go through the agency though. You know, the company isn’t hiring.
But obviously they need your work. I mean, it’s a bit mad isn’t it? A system where you work and then some sort of broker creams off the money. It must make you angry?
Really angry, especially when I work as hard as the other people. And the cleaning team, it’s really hard, especially on the back and lifting up heavy bins all day whilst managers just walk around. And now not even having a guarantee of work…
It’s not as if I can go and get another job straight away, because the economy’s contracting.
Do people there worry about the risk of infection from Covid?
People do. I heard a rumour that it was circulating in the abattoir. A gentleman actually was in hospital from it. People are worried. I just think people are so poor who are working, they’re just so desperate for money that they’re willing to work through it. That’s my gathering of the situation.
Is there any social distancing that goes on there?
In the canteen yeah but it’s impossible in the factory, like if someone’s talking to you you have to go close to them.
There is a sizable migrant workforce there, and I know that a lot of them live together. I was speaking to a few of the lads from Indonesia and they were worried. If their household gets infected, they still need to go to work you know. So if one gets infected, do they go to work or do they not go to work?
When you go into the factory they take your temperature with a laser thing. An older guy on the cleaning team had a temp and they sent him away for two weeks and he was battling to get the money
What, sick pay?
Yeah. I don’t know if he got it. I haven’t seen him for a while but the last time I spoke to him he said they didn’t help him.
Is there a union and what are the prospects of organising?
There’s a union but I don’t know the uptake on it. I remember speaking to an Indonesian boy one time, and we got talking and I said “oh how much do they pay you, are you happy with that?” And he said “No, I want to get paid more because I do a good job.” And I said, “Well, are you a member of the union?” He didn’t know it existed.
There’s no reps in the canteen. I’ve worked at other places and there’s reps in the canteen sometimes on specific days. I don’t know whether that’s due to the union or due to hostility from the factory.
Does it make you think about exploitation and the plight of working class people?
Definitely. I had to take this job because I was desperate. I got into debt on Universal Credit, before not serious debt but it made me fall behind on my bills. So I had to take this job… I really didn’t want to be doing it but I have no savings, I had to have income coming in.
And what about the situation facing migrant workers?
I’d say that if these workers weren’t there, then the factory wouldn’t be operating. I mean, there is Welsh working class, but the factory relies on migrant labour. And the food production industry wouldn’t be going through this crisis, wouldn’t be going generally without their labour.
And also you can see, you know, there was always this argument, especially during the European Union debate, about migrant workers undercutting, Welsh workers.
Well I’m undercutting workers, but I have to go through the agency. It’s the agency that is actively undercutting workers. So I can really see … you know how migrant workers are blamed for undercutting, but it’s actually the agency.
There’s this rumour that goes round the factory as well that migrants work much harder than the Welsh workers. Now the migrants work bloody hard don’t get me wrong, they work really, really hard. But the factory uses that narrative to cover over bad working pay and conditions.
How do you mean?
So they say, “oh, Welsh workers don’t want to work here. They don’t want to work hard.” And actually the Welsh working class don’t want to work there because conditions are awful. The factory covers this up by saying migrants work much harder, saying ‘these people work in these bad conditions, so should you.’
And do you realise that you’re a vital part of the production system?
Yes, absolutely. If we withdraw our labour then that factory wouldn’t operate.
Like a banker or lawyer, that can be done from home. We have to go into the factory and work. This is a starkly class issue. You know if those workers don’t go to work in the factory, then it won’t operate. If I hadn’t busted my guts for the last two months, and if we hadn’t all busted a gut, then that factory wouldn’t have operated.
As a leftist, I’m often accused of hating my country, which is actually in the reverse. I love my country. I love the people. I just want to live in a country that’s fair for all and where all can prosper. And we don’t have to exploit the people that live here and other countries in order for a minority who have a great life while we all suffer. So I’m very much aware of how my labour has kept that factory in operation.
Have you seen there’s been some walkouts over safety in the UK and do yo think that could happen here?
I have seen a couple of walkouts across the country and I think it’s fundamentally important that if workers feel unsafe, they walk out. I think there’s been a bit of a change of mood among workers in the factory recently, because of the East Timor workers, who are there because it was a colony of Portugal and an agency recruits them from there.
The East Timor workers are more conscious of the risk from Covid now because the community has learnt of a worker in Northern Ireland, who died of Covid and who was from East Timor. She worked in a food factory. Consciousness is rising and people are worried because the lockdown is easing but the infection rate is still very high. I don’t think they’re willing to risk their lives for work.
*A loading error meant the final question was missed off on an earlier version of this article.
