To counter this season’s labour shortage the Association of Labour Providers has established a central contact point for growers and producers who need workers.
When Sharon Cross of Barway Services, a major Fenland vegetable and salad grower called the ALP in desperation during the recent warm weather spike urgently needing 200 pickers to get their lettuce onto supermarket shelves she wasn’t sure of the response she would receive.
However, after the ALP notified all of its members of her need, Sharon’s answer says it all, “I have been totally surprised by the response – fingers crossed we will have sourced enough staff to see us through this period.”
David Camp, Director of the Association of Labour Providers said:
“Our members supply labour to the Food and Agricultural sectors – that’s their job. Whilst we only ever hear the bad news stories about gangmasters, most labour providers, particularly ALP members are professional and well run businesses. Labour providers play a vital role in the UK economy by supplying the demand for reliable and cost effective temporary labour. Many of our members have put into place labour sourcing strategies to cope with this year’s reduction in workers from Poland.”
Within 10 minutes the ALP can alert all of its near 200 members and those that can help will be on the phone straight away.
To help cope with the declining number of migrant workers coming to the UK we have also launched a new job board as a central sourcing point for UK Food and Agricultural jobs.
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It is free to advertise until the end of July 2008 and will provide a highly cost effective method of sourcing workers – one monthly advert could be advertising a need for 100 or even 1000 pickers or packers – there is no limit.
To make workers aware of these jobs within our sector we will be marketing the job board to a huge variety of networks, associations, websites and publications used by UK based and bound migrant workers.
