Who picked all the fruit and veg in the 70's and 80's when the the Soviets kept their lap dogs on a short leash?
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Seasonal Farm Worker Shortage
- Thread starter Cheeky Monkey
- Start date
daveinprague
New member
People from Spain and Portugal I would imagine. Dont think this job has been high on the English workers wishlist for some time.
Utter rubbish, any EU migrant hoping for work should and could access accurate information to their rights to any proposed host EU country, the UK a favourite destination for many Bulgarians and Romanians should have a clear understanding of our position, increased hostility is harder to evaluate but how you could possibly conclude that the GBP fluctuation against the Bulgarian Lev or the Romanians Leu might offset our significantly higher minimum wage rates compared to their own country is ludicrous.
Bulgaria:
Currency: Lev
Current exchange rate: £1.00 will buy you 2.22 Lev
Minimum wage: 2.6 Lev per hour £1.18 per hour
Romania:
Currency: Leu
Current exchange rate: £1.00 will buy you 5 Leu
Minimum wage: 8.7 Ron £1.74 per hour.
looney
Banned
- Jul 7, 2003
- 15,652
no there wasn't and you had this pointed out to you by another poster. I did my own search and found 3, one in Perth Scotland and 2 in Norfolk. Now thats not very good if you live in the south, it shows how some job markets have dried up as well as having wages supressed in others.
daveinprague
New member
You asked 'remainers' sneeringly for a link. You got one. Goodnight.
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,019
local people before the expansion and acceptance of the welfare state as away of life.
Brighton Mod
Its All Too Beautiful
Prhaps those that had a mind to travel have come already, the ludicrously low figure quote by govenrment especially during the Blair government in no way relate to the actual amount arriving. Don't forget Germany in all these factors, they need imported labour from across the border in Poland as well, but are not popular with many Polls, who prefer to come here, so those Polish workers we employ inform me.
neilbard
Hedging up
- Oct 8, 2013
- 6,280
There still sleeping after all that voting malarkey bless them.
surlyseagull
Well-known member
- Aug 23, 2008
- 848
I live in an area where there are numerous farms/companies who employ labour from abroad .
I have never in all my years of living here seen a single advert in the local paper or heard of a job being advertised at the local job centre for work at these farms ,it is a standard joke with people in our area and yes the local people at meetings have asked these companies why, and of course they get the usual "well British don't want the work " . They have specific job centres abroad . They are picked up by mini buses in the morning and taken back after work.
British people have tried to apply for these jobs and been told there are no vacancies only for foreign labour to be taken on (as reported by local newspaper) and the odd English worker that has slipped through the net has been ignored and ostracized by the other workers
This is information given to me by a manager and various employees of a large farming corporation at one of said companies .These companies try their upmost to not integrate with the local community unlike other business`s in area and are run more like camps than places of work.
Of course I don't know about companies in other areas but just the experience`s where I live .
I have never in all my years of living here seen a single advert in the local paper or heard of a job being advertised at the local job centre for work at these farms ,it is a standard joke with people in our area and yes the local people at meetings have asked these companies why, and of course they get the usual "well British don't want the work " . They have specific job centres abroad . They are picked up by mini buses in the morning and taken back after work.
British people have tried to apply for these jobs and been told there are no vacancies only for foreign labour to be taken on (as reported by local newspaper) and the odd English worker that has slipped through the net has been ignored and ostracized by the other workers
This is information given to me by a manager and various employees of a large farming corporation at one of said companies .These companies try their upmost to not integrate with the local community unlike other business`s in area and are run more like camps than places of work.
Of course I don't know about companies in other areas but just the experience`s where I live .
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Living on benefits in rural areas is a way of life? I didn't see much of that where I grow up.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Growing up where I did in a reasonably rural area outside of Hastings, that would be my experience too. Prior to 2004, work permits were issued and the foreign workers were there to work and not much else, then went home again. I had always put that down to the inability of the unemployed being able to get to the farms from urban areas easily for one and the fact the work isn't permanent. The margins were squeezed by the supermarkets etc and low wages are all that are being offered is another. The foreign workers also have agricultural working experience from growing up in rural areas and working on small holdings etc as kids.
I never really saw any farm labouring jobs advertised locally when I was younger either. I can think of a couple of agencies now that do, but they've always been aiming them at Eastern European's. When I used to get the train north at 6-7am from Warrior Square station a few years back, you could always see Eastern Europeans getting the Ashford train on the opposite platform to farms near Appledore etc in Kent.
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Quite. I have fallen into the trap of 'feckless British yoof' etc but the reality is this.
1. The clue to why Brits are not queuing up for seasonal work on UK farms is in the word SEASONAL. The sort of Eastern Europeans who come here are student types taking a year out, rather like a small number of mostly middle class English students would take a gap year in the 70s and do 'grape picking' in France etc. Some young people will do ski chalet hosting in winter and the modern equivalent of club 18-30 in the summer for a year or maybe more. This is NOT A CAREER and is a TEMPORARY job that does not fit well with student long vacations (or indeed school holidays). The idea that we have loads of unemployed yoof unwilling to get their hands dirty, preferring social security, is wrong on two counts - the numbers and the preference.
2. In the post war years (when there WAS a welfare state) there was still a sufficient number of white working class in London in itinerant employment who would find it appealing to spend everal months in temporary accomodation on farms in Kent picking fruit (as my neighbour's famiily did). They did this because there were NOT ENOUGH LOCALS to do the work. Not everyone who lives in the country is a peasant or serf who can do no more than seasonal work; education, aprenticeships, jobs in London, commuting, together with an intrinsically low population means that the farmers have had to 'import' labour for decades, if not longer.
3. Yes, after Brexit we could prvent the European seasonal workers coming here - or make them queue up for temporary visas (which they would have to pay for - £200 cost effective?). That will work . . . . or, hang on, perhaps they will go and do seasonal work somewhere in the EU (FFS). So how do we pick the fruit? If we have to resort to local labour the pay will have to double and even then we do not have a culture of SEASONAL working any more.
4. The only solution I can think of (and I am being serious) is to bring back national service; instead of making the yoof march up and down a parade ground and learn how to bayonette a sack of staw, we could make them spend the summer picking fruit (not sure what to do with them in the winter but, hey ho). In fact, six months' or less 'national service' would work and after that it would be time for the brighter ones to toddle off to university (perhaps with some of their fees offet by the money earned during their National Service) while the others can take up their apprenticeship or other employment in the booming post brexit economy.
(he says, while attempting and failing to maintain a straight face).
surlyseagull
Well-known member
- Aug 23, 2008
- 848
These companies do not exactly endear themselves to the local people and tend to not get involved, even when asked , in anything that involves our community i.e schools ,colleges local news fundraising etc unlike the majority of local companies who realise they need the community as much as we need them ....speaks volumes in my opinion .
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
They're starting to wake up and smell the coffee over the border now - http://www.kentlive.news/8203-farme...after-brexit/story-30410306-detail/story.html
What utter rubbish, you are quoting from Anthony Hook the Lib Dem campaigner for the UK in Europe.
Take a look, Kent County Council out of 81 seats up for grabs the Tories 67 with the Lib Dems getting 6.
General Election in Kent was Tories 56.5% of the vote and your mates Anthony Hooks party got 5.5%, try and get some credibility.
http://www.kentlive.news/kent-count...mean-for-you/story-30314950-detail/story.html
If you want reasonable debate cherry picking a Remainer from Kent and lending it to this board as some kind of indication of anything is laughable, its no more than a quote from a Remainer whom happens to be a councillor in Kent..
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
I seemed to have touched a raw nerve there. It seemed to be quoting research from Canterbury Christ Church University. Not a fan of Kent Live then?
Yeah sorry it did, its no more than someone offering another view on something that cannot be definitively proven and has been voted on already, it wasn't a 'wake up and smell the coffee moment'.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
'Wake and up smell the coffee' was more in reference to it now being reported in local media in Kent. Heart Kent were reporting similar the other day apparently too. Are you disputing Canterbury Christ Church University's findings on recruitment numbers being down 50% from EU countries since the vote though in Kent? Albeit anecdotally, I've heard the same in regards to farms not too far away from where I am now, over the border in Kent also.
I have posted in depth on this issue, I am not sure currently Brexit is going to impact on an Eastern European currently on less than £2.00 hour in his own country when he still has an opportunity to come here and earn £7.50 an hour and with the likelihood of associated benefits.
50% down on a large figure would still leave a large figure, so I am not yet feeling too sorry for the farmers that seem to underpin their own business model by underpaying their employed labour.
If it becomes blindingly obvious that to sustain some fruit farmers it may require some help then I assume it could be done quite quickly, but it would require scrutiny.
I like a punnet of strawberrys as much as the next man, but it seems a little bit silly for me the tax payer to subsidise a grower, who then sucks in cheap labour from Europe which means I then subsidise those British citizens that might otherwise be encouraged to do the work if the pay was adequate so that Miss Marple up the road pays £2.00 a punnet rather than a viable price of £3.00.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
It obviously already has impacted, as EU worker numbers are already down and farmers face labour shortages. The problems facing worker numbers this year, don't look like they're going to be addressed, so best of luck to the farmers affected on that one. After all, many of them voted for Brexit too, so if they're the Turkeys who voted for Christmas, so be it. I really can't see the supermarkets and wholesalers paying them more for produce and increasing the margins to free up capital for increased wages anytime soon though.
Post Brexit we'll see how attractive or not The UK is to EU citizens to do seasonal work here. They have plenty of other options in terms of countries to go to, which they can do easily under free-movement rather than apply for seasonal agricultural work permits here. If they can't be recruited, there's plenty of other non-EU countries close by I suppose - Turkey, Ukraine etc.
As for subsidies post 2022, who knows. As for Miss Marple, that was a phrase I actually heard Sir Max Hastings use back in March after Article 50 was triggered, to describe the rather quaint future we face of trying to go back to the past - 'Miss Marple Britain' he called it. Very apt.