‘Targets are unrealistic’: sacked fruit picker tells of treatment on Kent farm

Ilyas said his target was to pick about 15 boxes of cherries a day, but if 10 cherries or more were bad the whole box could be rejected. Photograph: Imgorthand/Getty Images

It had been a sweltering morning picking cherries beneath plastic polytunnels in July when Ilyas finally lost his temper at the farm where he was working in Kent.

“We could hardly breathe in there,” he said. “It was very difficult to work because the weather was very hot.”