One rainy morning in July, a stranger knocked at my friend Jenny’s door: he had been picking strawberries since first light and got lost on the way back to his campsite. She invited him in, gave him a cup of tea and drove him home. A week later, he turned up in great distress: he had been sacked, he told her, and had no means of getting home to Romania. He is staying with Jenny and her husband for now, and when I went over there for tea, he told me his story.

Octavian is 38, a jeweller by trade, married with two young children; business was slow, the family needed money, so he signed up with an agent from S&A Produce – the largest soft fruit grower in Britain – for six months’ seasonal work picking strawberries. He paid £350 upfront to cover “paperwork” and transport and was told he would earn the minimum wage of £5.52 an hour plus productivity bonuses.

But after deductions, including rent for his bunk in a six-berth container, his first week’s pay packet contained £134.18; and things didn’t get any better. Some days there was no work at all; other days he was sent home early. “They tell you: by 10am you must pick eight trays of Class 1 strawberries, two trays of Class 2. If you don’t, they send you back to camp – 30 or 40 people each time. Sometimes the strawberries in your tunnel are little, like this,” he said, holding up finger and thumb close together. “You can’t make your target; it’s not possible. I say to the man who is counting: ‘This is not fair. You are human being, I am human being, how can you do this?’”

Five weeks after their arrival in Herefordshire, Octavian and more than 300 fellow pickers were told their contracts were terminated: “There was double security in case we made trouble. Everybody was shocked; around me people were crying, borrowing phones to ring their families to send money.”

S&A Produce tells me that though each employee has a six-month permit, work is not guaranteed. “There are peaks and troughs, bad weather, poor crops and our needs change,” said spokesperson Rebecca Edmunds. Yet Home Office rules say that a picker must have a minimum of six weeks’ work; these people had less than five if you count days they were laid off completely. She agreed: “But they were serious underperformers.”

What about the practice of sending people away if they didn’t reach their quota by 10am? “That’s complete rubbish,” said Edmunds. “That just doesn’t happen.” But later she rang to say she had been mistaken: “If someone’s productivity is very low – say half the average – then they would be sent back to camp.”

Thanks to the kindness of strangers, Octavian has fared better than many, but as he talked to me on a sunny terrace in Jenny’s garden, he shook with anger: “We were mis-led 100 per cent,” he said. “It is a disaster for us; and for you English, it is a big shame.”

valleygirl@thetimes.co.uk

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