Skelmersdale Plus Staff 24 named Britain's worst gangmasters

Jul 29 2010 by Tom Bristow, Skelmersdale Advertiser

A SKELMERSDALE firm are officially Britain’s worst gangmasters.

Plus Staff 24, which supplies staff to farms and factories across West Lancashire, paid workers well below the minimum wage, put them into a home with a mould-infested toilet and denied them holiday pay, say official watchdogs.

According to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), which was set up to stamp out what it terms “modern day slavery”, Plus Staff 24 was run by bankrupt Portuguese gangmaster Maria Baptista.

The GLA says Baptista used the company as a front so she could continue operating in an industry in which she was already notorious.

The GLA revoked Plus Staff 24’s licence after handing it the worst score recorded in the agency’s four year history.

The Portuguese-run company broke 11 standards and scored 242 points – just 30 are needed to revoke a licence.

One worker, who sweated in the fields of West Lancs for a month picking fruit and vegetables, was left with nothing to live on.

They were told they owed the company money for rent and transport and had their wages deducted.

GLA chairman Paul Whitehouse described the exploitation as a “flagrant abuse of power over workers”.

“How are they supposed to survive?” he said.

The business, which is registered to an office in Cable House on the Westgate Industrial Estate, was empty when the Advertiser visited on Wednesday.