A British company has been found liable for the first time for victims of modern slavery in a landmark high court judgment. Justice Supperstone ruled in favour of six Lithuanian men who were trafficked to the UK and brought a civil case claiming compensation for being severely exploited by the Kent-based gangmaster firm DJ Houghton Chicken Catching Services.
The men were sent by the company, run by British couple Darrell Houghton and Jacqueline Judge, to catch chickens on farms around the country. They worked frequently on farms producing eggs for major supermarkets. The judge ruled that the men were owed compensation for the firm’s failure to pay the agricultural minimum wage, for charging prohibited work-finding fees, for unlawfully withholding wages, and for depriving the workers of facilities to wash, rest, eat and drink.
The workers described living and working in inhuman and degrading conditions. They said they were forced to work back-to-back eight-hour shifts for days at a time, denied sleep and toilet breaks, forcing them to urinate in bottles and defecate in carrier bags in their minibuses. They also alleged that their pay was repeatedly withheld, while Lithuanian supervisors abused and assaulted them, intimidated them with fighting dogs, and threatened them with instant eviction if they complained. The accommodation provided was dirty, overcrowded, unsafe, and infested with bed bugs and fleas.
Laurynas Kelpsa, one of the victims, said he was pleased with the judgment but still shocked by what had happened. “It means at last that some justice has happened. We’ve waited four years and it’s been really hard being forced to remember [the experience] all the time to prove they did wrong.”
The amount of compensation will be assessed at a future date but is expected to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds for unpaid wages alone. A claim for personal injury is still to be heard. Ten other Lithuanian men who were employed by the couple over the same period in similar conditions have now also brought a claim.
The anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Hyland, said: “It is a disgrace that any British employer in the 21st century would exploit their workers in such conditions. There is a dark irony that a business producing free range eggs did so using slave labour.”
