The BBC's Graham Satchell: "The effects will be felt right across the industry"

British flower growers are warning the combination of the minimum wage and the European Working Time Directive means field labourers who have picked daffodils may face the sack.

Growers say that margins in the industry are so narrow that keeping to the rules could close some farms.

The minimum wage of £3.60 an hour is a 12% rise on the current basic rate paid to workers.

Pickers paid by quantity

The Working time Directive sets a maximum number of hours field labourers can be asked to work and introduces paid holiday.

Jim Hosking, who farms 130 acres of daffodils in Cornwall, told the BBC's Countryfile programme: "It's a total nightmare at the moment. If they're really strictly enforced, it could put some of us out of business."

Many workers in the horticulture industry already earn more than the minimum wage because of the piece rate system, which means they are paid by quantity rather than the hour.

Fears of job losses

But thousands of workers, many of them older, are not paid in this way. It is claimed that the pressures of greater productivity to meet the higher wage bills could lead to job losses.

Hosking: "A total nightmare"

Farmers say many farms will have to cut their workforces by up to a fifth to meet the costs caused by the employment laws.

Employers in the flower industry have already complained that the Working Time Directive is overly bureaucratic.

Mr Hosking said: "It seems like a blanket of bureaucracy. It's set to strangle an industry that employs large numbers of field labour to harvest perishable crops."

Kent strawberry farmer Marion Regan also voiced her concerns about the impact of the two employment rules.

She said: "On top of two bad years for strawberry growers, it is going to be very difficult to manage.

"I think a lot of businesses will find it hard to survive."

Relief

But union leaders say the introduction of tighter rules is a welcome relief for workers who have long been exploited.

Barry Leathwood, of the Transport and General Workers' Union, said: "The black economy tends to dominate - people who are claiming benefit and are forced by circumstances to work for employers who abuse them because of their very vulnerability.

"These regulations will at least go some way towards dealing with the very substantial problems there are in the industry."