HUNDREDS of East European fruit pickers yesterday (Wednesday) went on strike in protest at the working conditions on a Herefordshire farm.

More than 400 foreign workers left the Brierley strawberry fields at S & A Produce at 9am and sat down on the old Hereford to Leominster road to highlight their plight.

They blocked the road for almost an hour, barring the way to traffic until police were called.

The strikers only agreed to move when the police assured them that journalists were on their way to hear their story.

Andrei Scharbovic, aged 20, from Belarus, summed up the pickers' grievances.

"What we are told in our home countries is very different from the reality here," he alleged.

Olga, a 20-year-old Russian worker, claimed colleagues were working 12-hour days, seven days a week.

She said the average weekly wage was £100 and that S & A Davies deducted more than £30 from this wage packet to pay for renting a caravan, which was shared with five other workers.

"We have spoken to other people working on other farms in England and we know they earn much more than us," she said.

Mr Scharbovic claimed the foreign workers tried to arrange a meeting with farm bosses to discuss their concerns, but were not taken seriously. "That was the final straw, so we decided to take this action," he added. "I don't want people to come here and experience the same problems again."

Responding to the criticism, S & A managing director Graham Neal denied claims that workers were putting in 12-hour days and seven-day weeks for an average weekly wage of £100. He said workers did a five-day week of eight hours a day for an average wage for non-harvest work of £211 and £189 for harvest work.

"People can earn that if they do the work they are offered but some of them don't turn up," he said.

Mr Neal said he thought the firm's £32 charge for accommodation, services and social facilities was fair.

l At the time of going to press a group of 10 foreign workers were meeting S & A bosses at the firm's headquarters in Marden. See next week's Hereford Times for details of the discussions.