News

Major supermarkets are to sign a protocol with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA), the organisation set up to protect vulnerable workers, to implement joint audits of suppliers.

Operation Ajax, which was launched today (3 June), aims to "weed out" gangmasters who are exploiting vulnerable workers within the food retail supply chain.

In May Sainsbury's became the first retailer to conduct a joint audit of one of its suppliers with a GLA auditor.

Judith Batchelar, director of Sainsbury's brand said that the scheme requires it to "go further down our supply chain than ever before".

GLA chairman Paul Whitehouse said that they would regularly publish figures from its work so the authority's activities can be benchmarked.

Operation Ajax will be spread across an 18-month period and it is predicted that it will involve up to 30 surprise raids of gangmasters across the UK.

There are currently 500,000 vulnerable workers in the agricultural, horticultural, shellfish gathering and associated processing and packaging industries under the GLA's remit.