'So much worse than I expected': one worker's time at a virus-hit farm

Karen spent three weeks packing broccoli at AS Green and Co before she quit last month in disgust at the working conditions. “It made me incredibly angry that people could be treated in such a manner,” she told the Guardian, recounting her time at the Herefordshire farm where at least 73 workers have tested positive for coronavirus.

“I’ve always known that agricultural work is really hard, but it was just so much worse than I expected,” she said. “I’ve picked apples and planted trees and done lots of hard jobs, but this was the hardest.”

She spent the first week in quarantine, but after that social distancing was not observed, she said. “I was isolated at the beginning but after that we were treated as one big household and you are all working together. Everyone is living and working so close together that it’s not surprising that if anyone gets Covid, it will spread very fast, and now nearly half of them have got it.”

Leaving the site was virtually impossible, Karen said. “You cook for yourself in your caravan, and once a week they take you to the supermarket. You have to have permission to have a car on site, and most people didn’t get permission. There was nothing to stop you leaving but it was very difficult.”

Most of the workers were from Bulgaria and Romania. Karen (not her real name) was one of three English female packers, who shared one of the 33 mobile homes on the site at a cost of £50 each per week.

She earned £8.85 per hour for the first 48 hours a week and £11.06 thereafter, often working 12-hour shifts or longer.

“No one choosing to put broccoli in their baskets has any idea what it is like to pack it,” she said. “You have a crate of broccoli and you have to trim it or not trim it depending on who wants it, and then put it into the right weight pile, and that goes on to a conveyor belt that takes it off to a machine that wraps it up in plastic.”

She claimed there were financial penalties for staff: “People were punished for getting stuff wrong or being too slow. If you were slow you had to have a day off. It didn’t happen to me, but our whole line was sent home early one day.”

She added: “They are audited and accredited by a whole selection of different labels that people stick on food, so I imagine there are farms that are worse.”

Related: Coronavirus: 200 farm workers quarantined in Herefordshire outbreak

Bev Clarkson, a national officer at the Unite union, said: “We said at the start of this pandemic that this is something that is likely to happen, and in particular on the farms because workers are put in caravans or dormitories where they have to share. Employers say they are doing all they can but they say they can’t adhere to the guidelines on social distancing.”

She added: “If one person gets coronavirus it will spread very quickly as has happened here, so this bubble idea is not working. Supermarkets have to be held accountable for what is happening within the supply chain. If supermarkets weren’t demanding such cheap prices then these people could live and work in better conditions. This was just a disaster waiting to happen.”

AS Green and Co was asked to comment but did not respond by the time of publication.