Organising migrant workers

THE URGENT need to organise migrant workers was one of the themes of
the Burston rally on 3 September. It was also a celebration of 100 years
of the agricultural workers’ union, now part of the TGWU.

Ivan Monckton from the TGWU introduced the rally. He has been heavily
involved in recruiting and representing the 5,000 Polish migrant workers
employed by one strawberry farmer in Leominster. These workers had
primitive toilet facilities and were paying £35 week for a room in a
caravan shared by six to seven others. They working 60 hours a week with
no overtime pay.

400,000 migrant workers were employed in agriculture every year,
which the TGWU has a responsibility to organise.

Socialist Party member Teresa MacKay explained how in 1906, the
National Federation of Women Workers was formed by Mary Macarthur, which
began organising women into industrial action to improve their wages and
conditions.

The same year the Tories were kicked out of office. Farm workers in
Norfolk were sacked and evicted by their employers for not voting Tory.
This prompted George Edwards to form the Eastern Counties Agricultural
Labourers Union – the forerunner of the agricultural workers’ union.

When Teresa summed up the meeting, she said millions of trade
unionists and young people would not be persuaded to vote Labour as they
no longer saw it as the party of the working class.

There was spontaneous applause.