Glastonbury Festival is the latest large-scale music event to garner unwanted attention in 2017. The event’s organizers have been accused of hiring on approximately 700 litter pickers for two weeks’ worth of paid employment, and then dismissing them after two days when the workload proved smaller than expected.
Workers from numerous European countries had traveled to Somerset, England after signing “zero-hour contracts” – meaning that the promoter was not required to guarantee them a minimum amount of work. A video obtained by The Independent shows a man presumed to be a litter picker supervisor physically pushing a protesting worker from the path of a vehicle.
Ironically, only a week prior Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn had taken to Glastonbury Festival’s Pyramid Stage alongside the gathering’s founder, Michael Eavis, to declare that young people didn’t need to “accept low wages and insecurity as just part of life.”
Jeremy Corbyn, left, speaking next to Michael Eavis, right, at Glastonbury Festival 2017.
Glastonbury Festival inaugurated in 1970, with the 2017 edition taking place from June 21st-25th. It takes place annually except on fallow years when the land is given time to recover – meaning that there will not be a 2018 edition.
The festival’s organizers have not issued an official statement on the displacement of its workers as of this writing.
Source: Dancing Astronaut
