Unite welcomed the moves by those peers that showed ‘dissent’ at the committee stage (16 January) to the government’s amendment to scrap the AWB.
If the peers had not spoken up, the amendment would have gone through ‘on the nod’ – but now a vote by the House of Lords on the AWB’s future has to be held at the report stage at the end of February or beginning of March, the union said.
Unite national officer for agriculture Julia Long said: “We applaud the intervention of those peers that did not want a large swathe of the agricultural workforce reduced to poverty wages.
“The government has behaved in a shambolic way in tacking on an amendment that will have a huge impact on the rural economy onto a business bill – the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.
“Many peers are angry at both the government’s plan to reduce rural workers’ livelihoods and the underhand manner it is being done. “A brake has been put on the government’s pernicious proposal. There is still time to mobilise enough parliamentary support to halt the AWB’s abolition which has set agricultural workers’ pay since the Second World War.”
Source: Unite
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