Migrant work and the future of food cultivation in the Netherlands*

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Polish migrant worker employed in a horticultural company (cited from Siegmann et al. 2020: 7).

Migrant workers make up a large and growing part of the agricultural labour force in the Netherlands, yet their essential work is made invisible in debates about the future of our food. Between 2010 and 2022, the share of farmworkers in the regular agricultural workforce rose from 30 to 40 per cent (CBS 2023). Among those, migrant workers form the backbone of the labour necessary to cultivate, harvest and process vegetables and fruit. Jointly, these horticultural items top the list of agricultural exports from the Netherlands that make the country the worlds’ second agricultural exporter after the USA.

While the future of food has moved to the centre of public attention in the Netherlands, migrant workers remain positioned at its periphery. For example, media headlines about the farmers’ protests featured many tractors but no migrant farmworkers. The Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands underlines that a future-proof agricultural agreement must involve many relevant stakeholders and also benefit workers; yet farm workers were not invited to the accord’s negotiating table. This invisibility contrasts with the significance of his work that a Polish migrant worker soberly expresses in the opening quote.

Migrant workers: weakest link in the Dutch agri-food chain

Migrant farmworkers form the weakest link in the Dutch agri-food chain. In different parts of the Global North, these chains have been characterized as ‘supermarket models’, dominated by few powerful retailers. In the Netherlands, the two largest supermarkets jointly hold an almost 60 per cent share in the retail market, while many smaller supermarkets work together in a national buying group. Supermarkets, but also consumers, have benefitted from this oligopolistic competition, with retail prices of labour-intensive fruit and vegetable cultivation declining. As a result, farmers’ income is squeezed and only large farmers are able to cope. Migrant workers pay for the downward pressure on food prices passed on to them in the form of low wages and insecure contracts.

Migrant workers pay for the downward pressure on food prices ... in the form of low wages and insecure contracts

The number of migrant workers in Dutch agriculture is high, yet the exact figure is disputed. In 2020, Statistics Netherlands’ (CBS) Migrant Monitor counted 21,200 workers from EU countries as directly employed in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. The majority of them were Polish nationals, followed, at some distance, by persons from Romania and Bulgaria.

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Greenhouse automation
© Petar Ivošević

Official figures on migrant work, however, veil rather than reveal. Most migrants working in Dutch agriculture hold contracts that are signed by temporary employment agencies rather than growers. This widespread use of indirect agency employment has been catalysed by the flexibilization of the Dutch labour market. Since the introduction of the 1999 Flexibility and Security Act, indirect contracts with employment agencies have become legal. They provide workers with phased economic and social entitlements that enable growers to lower labour costs. Besides veiling migrant farmworkers indirectly employed through agencies, CBS figures may exclude seasonal workers working a maximum of four out of six months in the Netherlands as registration is not mandatory for them (Inspectie SZW 2021: 12-13). Horticultural employers estimate their sub-sector alone to provide structural employment to 139,000 people, with the number rising to 248,000 during peak periods (Dutch Horticulture 2023).

Keeping these disclaimers in mind, CBS data do give a rough idea about the overall distribution of migrant workers across regions and sectors as well as their labour conditions. They reflect that the share of migrant workers from Central and Eastern European[1] (CEE) countries in the total labour force is highest in the horticultural hubs of South and North Holland, Limburg and North Brabant (CBS 2023). South Holland is the capital of greenhouse horticulture; a large number of open field fruit and vegetable farms are located in Limburg and North Brabant; while North Holland is a hub for flower bulb production and other open field floriculture.

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Concentration of EU migrant workers in the Netherlands per region
Concentration of EU migrant workers in the Netherlands per region (%) © CBS (2023)

The downward pressure on food prices in the ‘supermarket model’ of the Dutch agri-food chain translates into low wages for migrant workers. The average hourly pay of workers from CEE countries is lowest compared to Dutch and other foreign workers. In 2021, the vast majority of farmworkers born in Romania, Poland or Bulgaria held a job that paid around the minimum wage of less than €15 per hour, with a higher comparative share of women migrants earning low wages (CBS 2023). Not only are migrant workers’ incomes low, they are also insecure. This is reflected in the fact that the majority of CEE migrant farmworkers are employed on fixed term contracts.

National and EU framework shapes migrant farmworkers’ ‘regulated precarity’

Dutch regulation of agency work forms one root of migrant farmworkers’ precarity. Illegal in some other countries, after the legalization of contracts with employment agencies in 1999, indirect employment emerged as the dominant contract type held by migrant farmworkers in the Netherlands. The relevant collective bargaining agreements provide agency workers with staggered economic and social entitlements, with the first phase lasting up to 78 weeks. During the first 26 weeks of this phase, their contract may be terminated at any time and workers are only paid for hours worked. Workers in the last phase must be offered a permanent contract and receive payment even if there is no work for them (Inspectie SZW 2021: 22). Dismissal after the first phase and reemployment after a period of unemployment is common. As a result, most CEE migrants hold first phase contracts.

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Farm workers in field with tractor
© policy options

Interlinked agency contracts that combine ‘bed and job’ aggravate migrant farmworkers’ dependence on their employers. Newcomers to the Netherlands appreciate ‘package deals’ that combine the employment contract with the offer of accommodation, health insurance and transportation. For their employers, this is financially attractive because Dutch tax legislation enables the deduction of expenses for migrant workers’ housing and health insurance up to a maximum of 25 per cent of the minimum wage. The agency’s labour costs are reduced by this deduction of so-called extraterritorial costs from workers’ pre-tax earnings. Yet, coming with the simultaneous fear of homelessness on top of dismissal, this system disciplines migrant farmworkers and curbs complaints against indecent working and living conditions (Siegmann et al. 2022).

EU regulation also flanks the flexibilization and cheapening of migrant labour for Dutch agriculture. The Posting of Workers Directive (1996/71/EC), in particular, enables employers to post workers from a company in one EU member state to a company in another. Such postings can reduce labour costs because wages, taxation and social security remain under the auspices of institutions in the sending member state (Siegmann et al. 2022: 233).

the bed ... and job [contracts] aggravate migrant farmworkers' dependence on their employers

The sketch above puts question marks behind the government’s upbeat portrayal of migrant workers as ‘no second-class citizens’ (Ministerie van SZW 2022). Instead, Berger and Oudman’s (2021) sober, if not understated summary seems more accurate: ‘The people who take care of our food are not well taken care of.’

Outlook for change

Alongside and often intertwined with care, food is at the centre of life-making processes. In capitalist agri-food chains, these processes commonly involve the commodification of both labour and nature that results in the devaluation of food and of the labour involved in its cultivation and processing. The widespread invisibilization of migrant farmworkers in statistics, policy and media discourses, and the precarity of their working and living conditions outlined above, are mechanisms that underpin this devaluation.

For a change towards a sustainable future of migrant work in food cultivation, greater recognition of the essential value of food needs to be matched by dignified conditions for those involved in its production. Different actors in the agri-food chain should and can support shifts of power, resources and recognition towards migrant farmworkers:

  • State regulation of agri-food chains in ways that ensure retailers’ accountability for labour conditions along this chain is possible and in line with EU commitments to fair trading practices.
  • The experience of the Fair Food Program (FFP) in the US shows that, even in a highly internationalized food system, value redistribution across the agri-food chain to the (migrant) labour force is possible based on the market mechanism or on public-private partnerships.
  • Regulations that effectively guarantee the equal treatment of agency and directly employed workers, e.g. through a public licensing system for employment agencies, has been a demand of EU directives.
  • Small mechanisms to revalue food, such as solidarity-based payment, taxation and subsidies may offer a regulatory alternative towards sustainable, yet affordable food production.
  • Furthermore, SOS Rosarno’s example demonstrates that insistence on a living income for farmworkers and farmers does not need to deprive poorer segments of society from access to good food cultivated under decent conditions – if the oligopoly power of the current supermarket model is addressed head on.
  • Trade unions have a key role in helping to visibilize migrant workers’ central role in food production and to amplify their voice. This way, effective organizing can be a win-win for migrant workers and the Dutch trade union movement.

The ongoing fierce debate about the future of food production in the Netherlands offers a window of opportunity for change towards a sustainable future of migrant work in the agri-food chain. It should be seized by the Dutch government, advisory bodies and other actors in the Dutch agri-food chain alike.

[1] Here, CEE countries mainly refers to the EU member states of Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

Migrant work and the future of food cultivation in the Netherlands*

Member for

2 years
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Karin Astrid Siegmann

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at ISS.

* This article is a shortened and slightly adapted version of an essay published in the The Netherlands Institute for Social Research volume De internationale verwevenheid van ons voedsel: tien essays over oorzaak en gevolg van internationalisering in het voedselsysteem (The international interconnectedness of our food: ten essays on cause and effect of internationalisation in the food system) edited by Arjen van der Heide.

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Migrant work and the future of food cultivation in the Netherlands*

Member for

2 years

References

Berger, L. and T. Oudman (2021) ‘Duurzame Toekomst voor de Landbouw? Niet Zolang Arbeidsmigranten Wegwerpproducten Zijn’, De Correspondent 28 April 2021. Available at: https://decorrespondent.nl/12295/duurzame-toekomst-voor-de-landbouw-nie… [accessed 20 September 2023].

Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) (2023) ‘Foreign-born Employees; Resident/Non-resident, Demographic Variables’. Available at: https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/en/dataset/85477ENG/table?searchKeywords=… [accessed 20 September 2023].

CBS (2020) ‘Werknemers Afkomstig uit Buitenland; Wel/niet Ingezeten, Persoonskenm,'10-'17’. Available at: https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/nl/dataset/84060NED/table?dl=1C99B&ts=169… [accessed 20 September 2023].

Dutch Horticulture (2023) ‘Facts and Figures’. Available at: https://www.dutchhorticulture.nl/en/facts-and-figures [accessed 20 September 2023].

Inspectie Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid (SZW) (2021) Rapport Arbeidsmigranten. Den Haag: Inspectie SZW.

Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid (SZW) (2022) Jaarrapportage Arbeidsmigranten 2022. Den Haag: Ministerie van SZW.

Siegmann, K.A., J. Quaedvlieg and T. Williams (2022) 'Migrant Labour in Dutch Agriculture: Regulated Precarity', European Journal of Migration and Law 24(2): 217-240.

Siegmann, K.A., Quaedvlieg, J. and Williams, T. (2020) Policy Brief: From Regulated Precarity to Decent Work. Improving Conditions for Migrant Workers in Dutch Agriculture. The Hague: ISS.

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