Foreign fruit pickers have been protesting over pay and conditions at one of the UK’s biggest fruit farms.

Police were called out last week to S&A Produce after 300 workers, from eastern Europe, staged a sit-in protest, the BBC reported.

The pickers claimed they were being paid just £40 a week, but company director Graham Neal said the workers are being paid at least the national minimum wage.

He also said that the workers' requests for fewer breaks and a longer working week in order to earn more money are out of the question.

Olia Volodkevich, one of the striking workers, said: "They don't respect us. They treat us like animal people."

But Neal said he paid his workers £4.85 an hour if they were picking strawberries and around £5.85 for other agricultural work.

“Basically they want to work more hours but unfortunately 39 hours is what we consider to be sensible,” he told the BBC.

“They want to work more days but again we believe that five days is sensible. They also want to take less breaks but the breaks are set and they must have a morning, lunch and afternoon break.”

The workers are contracted to work for 12 weeks up until September.

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