Just another piece of meat ??

Thousands of workers in Britain's food industry are being subjected to widespread mistreatment and exploitation, including physical and verbal abuse and degrading working conditions, according to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) .The inquiry includes reports from meat factory workers who say they have had frozen burgers thrown at them by line managers, and accounts of pregnant women being forced to stand for long periods or perform heavy lifting under threat of the sack.It also contained reports from women with heavy periods and people with bladder problems on production lines being denied toilet breaks and forced to endure the humiliation of bleeding and urinating on themselves.Some examples, such as forcing workers to do double shifts when ill or tired, were in breach of the law and licensing standards, while others were a "clear affront to respect and dignity".

One-fifth of workers interviewed, from across England and Wales, reported being pushed, kicked or having things thrown at them.
A third had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse.
A quarter of workers mentioned poor treatment of pregnant workers and women attributed miscarriages to conditions.
Some told ECHR they worked every day of the week without days off. The maximum number of hours worked a week regularly was 90 hours, while some shifts lasted 16-18 hours with only a few hours rest in between shifts.

Migrant workers are the most affected because one-third of permanent workers and two-thirds of agency workers in the industry are migrants, but British and other agency employees face similar ill-treatment, the report found.The 15-month inquiry into recruitment and employment in the sector found the migrants were mainly Polish, followed by Lithuanian, Latvian, Czech, Slovakian and Portuguese.

The EHRC director general said: "We have heard stories of workers subjected to bullying, violence and being humiliated and degraded by being denied toilet breaks. Some workers feel they have little choice but to put up with these conditions out of economic necessity. Others lack the language skills to understand and assert their rights."

One Brazilian man working in a poultry factory in the east of England, said: "I'll never forget it ... I'm not a slave. I just can't speak English. He talked to me like he talked with an animal..."

Despite finding the workplace distressing and degrading, nearly one-third of workers endured this treatment without complaint because of fears that their work would be terminated and their chances of securing stable, permanent employment harmed.These workers also had little knowledge of their rights or how to make complaints.