And the fact they can't afford anything anymore due to EU free-trade being sacked off. I feel for the Remainers but If you voted for Brexit then tough shit, you have to live with the consequences.
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Seasonal Farm Worker Shortage
- Thread starter Cheeky Monkey
- Start date
And the fact they can't afford anything anymore due to EU free-trade being sacked off. I feel for the Remainers but If you voted for Brexit then tough shit, you have to live with the consequences.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Just like in Grantham. The hospital's A&E department is shut overnight because of just that.
jakarta
Well-known member
We have one a half million people unemployed and none of them can pull potatoes or cabbages out of the ground? 
We have one a half million people unemployed and none of them can pull potatoes or cabbages out of the ground?
Where to start with this one?
Official Old Man
Uckfield Seagull
Speaking here as someone who has been on both sides of this.
I worked in Spain and my wage was low, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Meanwhile here now I need 6 summer staff. British atitude is to turn up when they feel like it, go home early and never do any work when they are here. Foriegn staff turn up on time, work hard, ask for more hours and never let me down. All are on minimum wage plus bonus plus holiday pay.
Taking this past weekend as an example. Foriegn started at 9 am. British strolled in at 10:15 and sat down to eat breakfast.
British staff just don't want to work, end of.
I worked in Spain and my wage was low, 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Meanwhile here now I need 6 summer staff. British atitude is to turn up when they feel like it, go home early and never do any work when they are here. Foriegn staff turn up on time, work hard, ask for more hours and never let me down. All are on minimum wage plus bonus plus holiday pay.
Taking this past weekend as an example. Foriegn started at 9 am. British strolled in at 10:15 and sat down to eat breakfast.
British staff just don't want to work, end of.
The Birdman
New member
On holiday in Spain Greece Turkey Far East
daveinprague
New member
Hundreds of thousands of them will give up their unemployment benefit, and housing benefits for minimum wage back breaking work. Think he is onto something here.
You will be happy paying 20 per cent more for your fruit and veg then? Along with higher taxation, higher mortgage payments and more for just about everything else? If so, please continue.
Hundreds of thousands of them willl also be prepared to uproot their families and move away from their friends and support network for this seasonal work also I would guess.
ManOfSussex
We wunt be druv
Hundreds of thousands of them will also be prepared to live in very expensive places like Kent and also do this seasonal work for the minimum wage also I would guess.
Precisely, however whilst it might not be a viable wage for a British worker it is for an eastern European that can get a rate of pay up to five times more than he would for similar work back home, it is the EU that facilitates the skewed market that results in driving these wages down and sucking in workers from the poorest parts of the EU.
On the one hand you predictably sneer at those Brexiteers in Lincolnshire whilst then demanding farmers pay a living wage even though they have a glut of cheap labour coming to the UK on their EU ticket.
- Jul 10, 2003
- 27,720
We have one a half million people unemployed and none of them can pull potatoes or cabbages out of the ground?
If only someone had thought of this a few months ago when all we were getting was those 'scare stories '
Trufflehound
Re-enfranchised
28 replies and no one's mentioned the word 'supermarkets'?
Farms can't afford to pay workers high wages because the supermarkets are always leaning on them, forcing the prices down and squeezing the farmers' margins in order to safeguard their own. And many farmers know that the supermarkets control the food market, so without them the farms would quickly go out of business.
And one reason the supermarkets do that (besides paying shareholders' dividends) is that their customers are used to buying cheap food that is really below the real cost price in some cases.
If the UK farming industry is to be sustainable into the long term future, people are just going to have to get used to paying a realistic price for things. And the supermarket shareholders are going to have to become less greedy. Neither of those are particularly likely to happen.
Farms can't afford to pay workers high wages because the supermarkets are always leaning on them, forcing the prices down and squeezing the farmers' margins in order to safeguard their own. And many farmers know that the supermarkets control the food market, so without them the farms would quickly go out of business.
And one reason the supermarkets do that (besides paying shareholders' dividends) is that their customers are used to buying cheap food that is really below the real cost price in some cases.
If the UK farming industry is to be sustainable into the long term future, people are just going to have to get used to paying a realistic price for things. And the supermarket shareholders are going to have to become less greedy. Neither of those are particularly likely to happen.
Agree to a point, but before supermarkets families were still going on 'holiday' to hop pick in Kent, even accepting farming can be labour intensive they seem to have a long history of using cheap labour.
At some point it would be nice to see a competitive wage where the supermarkets and us the consumer pay a sustainable price at the till, I cannot help thinking that for todays cheap punnet of strawberries, we soon get taxed to subsidise those very workers and those farmers producing the fruit anyway.
Dave the OAP
Well-known member
i always thought that members of the travelling community and students were the fruit pickers and vegetable harvesters...so much so that our school terms were designed around the availability of students and their parents to undertake this work through the summer months?
Are the travelling community above this sort of thing now, preferring to do odd jobs around the community they happen to be parked up on?
Are the travelling community above this sort of thing now, preferring to do odd jobs around the community they happen to be parked up on?
The Large One
Who's Next?
The EU is not responsible for the level of wages and/or cost of living in differing emerging/new EU countries. Those countries who've joined in the past 10 years or so aren't just going to alter their salary structure to suit the UK. And the EU certainly isn't facilitating that.
A 10% rise in non-skilled EU workers coming to the UK would result in a 1.8% pay drop, according to the Bank of England (the equivalent of being paid £7.44 an hour as as opposed to £7.50 an hour) - which is vastly different from 'driving wages down'. Across ALL sectors of working migrants, there is no evidence of any wages being driven down.
jakarta
Well-known member
Presumably you think unemployment and housing benefits drop from the sky? Also presume you think 'Back breaking work' is only for Eastern Europeans?
daveinprague
New member
No, but I live in the real world, and not the sunlit uplands of Brexit fantasy.
I think an earlier poster made the point about migrant workers, and UK workers when it comes to this sort of work.
So, honestly, you think people will give up their benefits, and move their households to do this sort of work for miniumum wages? Really?
jakarta
Well-known member
Yes I think they should be told their 'benefits' are paid for by taxpayers like me and if there is work available for them they get out there & do it. Really.
