Tesco and Sainsbury’s have been named among a number of supermarket giants which have been linked to multiple migrant worker abuses within the UK.

New data from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) revealed that 56% of recorded abuse against migrant workers in the UK occurred on supermarket shop floors, agriculture, fishing, processing and packaging.

Data recorded between 1 December 2022 and 30 November 2023 found ten supermarket chains were explicitly linked to abuse in the past year: Tesco (8 cases), Lidl (4 cases), Morrisons (3 cases), Sainsbury’s (3 cases), Co-op (3 cases), Aldi (2 cases), Asda (2 cases), Waitrose (2 cases), Marks and Spencer (1 case) and SPAR (1 case).

Racism, wage theft and threats of unfair dismissal were a dangerous combination in many of the recorded cases…

Exploitation was most reported on agriculture and livestock farms (27 cases).

However, the scope and scale of abuse is believed to be much higher than these figures indicate – owing to lack of access to remedy and grievance mechanisms by migrant workers, and the threat of reprisal for workers who said they were afraid to speak up…