'We are free people but this is the work of slaves'

Jan, an Estonian with a history PhD, bristled with anger when he heard the word "gangmaster". Starting work picking daffodils at 7am yesterday in a muddy Cornish field, he said: "It is hard labour; your bones hurt at the end of the day. Then the boss, this gangmaster, comes and pays you - sometimes it is just £20. We are free people but this is the work of slaves."

Jan, an Estonian with a history PhD, bristled with anger when he heard the word "gangmaster". Starting work picking daffodils at 7am yesterday in a muddy Cornish field, he said: "It is hard labour; your bones hurt at the end of the day. Then the boss, this gangmaster, comes and pays you - sometimes it is just £20. We are free people but this is the work of slaves."

Hundreds of flower pickers like Jan were fanned out across Cornwall at the peak of the annual daffodil harvest, which makes the county an estimated £50m a year and brings about 5,000 migrant workers to the region who are prepared to undertake nine hours of backbreaking daily labour for scant financial reward.

But as the bunches of Europe's earliest annual bloom were being loaded into crates, questions were being asked about the human cost of providing the nation with the 30 million daffodils that come out of the Cornish soil every year.

Environmental health officials said that the conditions in which 56 Greek workers had been kept while working on farms in the Penzance area had been "atrocious and inhuman" after they were forced to flee under police escort earlier this week amid claims that they had been beaten, threatened and left unpaid.

The two former Army tents in a field next to an industrial estate on the edge of Hayle, where the Greek workers, all ethnic Romany, had been living, were deserted last night.

The pickers had been given canvas military cots to sleep on, while a cattle shed with a concrete floor and no windows had been set aside for the 10 women in the group. A portable toilet block, daubed with names of the workers, remained caked in excrement, with a pile of dirty plates and a pot of festering chicken stock in one corner.

Roger Harnett, the head of planning and building control for Penwith District Council, said: "It was totally unfit for human habitation. While there had been some effort to provide facilities, the resulting conditions were atrocious. If the Greek workers had not made it clear that they were leaving, we would have had to shut the place down anyway. We have seen other tented accommodation, but these were by far the worst conditions we've seen for seasonal workers."

The Greeks, who were working legally, were part of a yearly influx of flower pickers to Britain, many from eastern European countries such as Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Bulgaria and Slovakia. Most enter Britain on seasonal work permits, although illegal immigrants have also been caught on picking teams.

While the lucky pickers are housed in out-of-season hotels, holiday camps and caravan parks, others have to stay in makeshift accommodation provided by sub-contractors who supply picking teams to the daffodil growers.

Winchester Growers, the country's largest flower producer, which supplies super-markets and florists, confirmed last night that some of the Greek workers had picked daffodils on its farms in Cornwall.

Michael Mann, the company's production director, said: "We would recognise that for workers to be living in tented accommodation was not appropriate. A decision to accept accommodation of this nature for pickers supplied to us will not be made again in a million years."

The gangmaster responsible for accommodating the Greek workers hit back at the claims that they had been mistreated. But he admitted that money for their first week's work had been held back to meet the cost of flights and accommodation.

Alan Gerard, the Canadian managing director of Hayle-based firm Bold Line, which supplies pickers to several growers in Cornwall through Greek contacts, said: "They simply couldn't do the work and they made up these stories as excuses so they could leave.

"There were no threats, they had food from Tesco and we even bought them musical instruments. The arrangement was that we would be reimbursed for the transportation and other costs. Now I'm £30,000 out of pocket."

In the absence of a complaint from the Greek workers to spark an inquiry, the truth of how the Romany were treated is likely to remain unknown.

But for all pickers, the Cornwall experience could not be more different from that of the thousands of Britons who flock to the county every summer on holiday.

In order to maximise the yield, workers are expected to be in the fields by first light and work until dusk. Each flower has to be picked by hand to ensure the foliage, which allows the bulb to grow the following year, is left behind.

The pickers, who are expected to work in all conditions, are paid a piece rate of about 6p per bunch of a dozen stems. The best workers can pick a thousand bunches a day, earning £60, but many manage fewer than 500.

Jan, 34, who came from his home in the Estonian capital Tallinn to earn money to fund his studies after being recruited by a local fixer, said: "You are bent over, staring at the ground for eight or nine hours a day. You have to be tough, otherwise you get sick and then no one will pay you anything. You don't get a pension with this job."