Seasonal Farm Worker Shortage

[Wardy's twin]

Sorry. I got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

still a pretty awful statistic.... why can't those who voted for brxit just come clean and say we have f****d up badly please can we stop now....

 

[Wardy's twin]

No you didnt you were just totally wrong.

nope , just quoted the wrong statistic the overall message is the same, brexit is going to change the world for us and most of that change will be detrimental.

 

[Mr Putdown]

Really, which countries are these?

Australia, America, UK etc.

 

[Pavilionaire]

Footage of crops being ploughed into the ground because there's no one available to pick them will not play out well for David Davis as he simultaneously argues for opting out of free movement of labour.

If I was Barnier I'd bring in a punnet of French strawberries and offer him one as he spouted his Brexit tosh.

 

[daveinprague]

Australia, America, UK etc.

Cool, no problems then.

 

[Boys 9d]

Didn't Mao Tse-tung have a scheme where city dwellers were directed to the countryside to act as agricultural labourers?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

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.

Having spoken to a few farmers about this in the past they suggest it's more supermarkets operating near monopolies and driving prices down. Given farmers have near zero margins and staff are paid the minimum it's pretty clear to me where the issue, and the money, lies.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

QUOTE=Thunder Bolt;7991288]Who's going to pay all the civil servants required to process all these work permits?

the EU seasonal workers , you make it sound like no other country has the same process, how do they cope
regards
DR[/QUOTE]

Open borders.

 

[Thunder Bolt]

Well it is usually the person applying, even the DVLA aims to break even each year.

The U.K. border and customs staff have been more than decimated like the police, & fire service.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

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.

That's one way. I've always preferred to make things attractive...as opposed to using force. I think it's a more palatable approach all round.

 

[daveinprague]

Didn't Mao Tse-tung have a scheme where city dwellers were directed to the countryside to act as agricultural labourers?

Khmer Rouge in Cambodia... the killing fields.

 

[Brighton Mod]

If we can't import 'cheap' labour from Europe can we not just import it from elsewhere, I am sure there would be people from poorer countries who would love to work here and then take some well earned money home, or am I being naive?

or invest in computer driven machinary, will put us ahead of the agricultural field, especially certain economies in Europe. Take British wine for an example.

 

[Is it PotG?]

So if margins are so tight now, a minimum wage increase would have what effect, whatever the worker SAUCE?.

 

[BigGully]

nope , just quoted the wrong statistic the overall message is the same, brexit is going to change the world for us and most of that change will be detrimental.

It wasn't in the context of future enrolment after Brexit, it was a direct quote of how he had thought foreign nurses not a few but 96% had left since Brexit, you probably thought the same, the magnitude of the percentage in response to the post wouldn't lend itself to a 'got my wires crossed' or 'wrong end of stick' stuff, its clearly a stat he thought was accurate.

 

[Brighton Mod]

The U.K. border and customs staff have been more than decimated like the police, & fire service.

Its time the politicians put out their costings and ask the British public how much they would be prepared to increase their taxes and cut their pensions, to increase the quality of public services. We can have what we want, but we have to pay for it and then face the consequences, the politicians should then be made to stick to the budget allocated, now thats real democracy not the fake, deceiving fiction that we are plied with every election.

 

[BigGully]

The U.K. border and customs staff have been more than decimated like the police, & fire service.

I simply mentioned applicants paying in response to you being seemingly perplexed at how this might be funded.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Just read that Therasa May is over in Brussels today. This should be a laugh....strong and stable

 

[Two Professors]

Perhaps we could ask the 'Million People Protest March' or whatever it was called to help,as they have obviously got sod-all else to dh,need more than a couple of hundred,do we?

 

[giveusfalmerplease]

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.

Yes this is it in a nutshell. People born and living in the UK basically get so many benefits these days IT DOES NOT PAY them to work. A relative of mine lost their job after 15 years as their firm went bust and even with benefit caps etc their council tax saving, benefits etc mean that she was only £20 per MONTH worse off not working. Now to suggest to these type of people - go work in a field for 60 hours a week, pay your own travelling expenses, pay tax and national insurance on that and lose your council tax benefit so you end up over £100 a week LESS , its just not going to happen. Until the government allow people to keep benefits and work but maybe they have to pay higher rate tax , this situation will persist.

Compare that with the European summer intake of workers - they come here for a working holiday in the caravans - low overheads, no council tax bills, probably can even park their caravans where they work, earn the money (and like others have said probably 4 times what they would get in Eastern Europe - say Ukraine). Summers over they go home, nice wedge in their pockets that helps them survive the winter months. Good luck to them.

 

[Dave the OAP]

Interesting interview with a farmer in Cambridgeshire who needs over 1000 people over the summer to pick the crops in her fields. She was asked why she doesn't use local labour and she said that the local unemployment rate was less than 1.5% and there was no one who wanted to do this sort of work anyway.

She said that if she couldn't get people over from Europe which her agents were saying they were really struggling to temp people over, she would end up letting some of the crops to rot or use as feed for the animals in winter....which was uneconomic in the long term.