S&A Produce has defended its wages policy following claims in the media it has paid its workers as little as £45 a week.

A report today by the Independent showed that the Hertfordshire soft-fruit grower had paid a worker just £45 for a week following a leaked payslip from one of its Bulgarian workers.

The Independent obtained the payslip and said workers had complained to them that they had had to return earlier than the six months they believed they were going to stay.

But the strawberry producer moved to dispel the rumours suggesting that, while the facts were true, the paper had misled readers into thinking the workers had been manipulated.

Rebecca Edmonds, PR and planning manager at S&A, told freshinfo: “We accept that the payslip was genuine but they have taken it out of context. Demand for work has been very variable from one week to the next and this particular slip includes an extra £35 pay for pastoral charges - such as transport, English lessons and accommodation - so it is lower than the average £110 to £143 net pay we usually pay.”

Edmonds admitted the company had been able to offer less work this year than last, with average hours slipping from 39 hours to 29.

She said: “We based the number of workers we would need on a labour forecast set by average crop and productivity. However, the strawberries have been considerably bigger, and easier to pick, and earlier this year - productivity has been up 45 per cent so we had to pick earlier. It has been an exceptional year and every other year we aim to offer 39 hours a week. More than 1,000 workers came back after last year so their experience also sped things up.

“We do make it very clear to workers, before they leave for this country, that we cannot guarantee hours but there is often a mismatch between reality and expectation about the length of stay. We are regularly and thoroughly audited over our labour standards and provision and 84 per cent of our workers said they are going to return next year.”

Some 1,600 workers are now working for S&A, down from 2,400 at its peak, and will tail downwards until October.

Peter McCaull, a councillor and former mayor of Leominster, said the firm needed to improve how it communicated to migrant workers the hours they would be working and how much money they could expect to make.

"If I had family that went out to work in Bulgaria I would expect them to be treated like human beings and be paid a fair wage for a fair day's work," he said. "These people have paid £200 of their own money to come over to work here and yet they are given barely enough work to survive. Many of them are unable to afford their flights back home."

Sainsbury's, who S&A supplies, said it would assess the situation.

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