... for those who are devastated about Brexit, how are you dealing with the fear and depression and anxiety?

[testytesting]

Has anyone got any strategies? I am genuinely not one for melodrama, but I am devastated, angry, terrified, depressed, and I feel so utterly helpless. Nothing in my lifetime has made me feel like this, and I just can't imagine feeling like this for the next two years and beyond. I can hardly bear to listen to the news, but I feel compelled to anyway. How are other remainers dealing with this, what are your coping strategies? And what, if anything, can we DO?

My brother works in a factory and says wages there have fallen considerably over the last few years
Again, it might be cheaper to join a union and organise rather have Brexit job and wage cuts. The Germans did, and don't have Brexit job cuts.
Unless there are some Brexit pay rises we haven't heard about yet.

The under cutting of wages has been created by the businesses. Not the migrants. If you look at other industries such as caring zero hours contracts where not introduced due to migrants. It is due to business

Can you explain what you mean by this? Businesses will reduce wages and conditions if and where they can. The fact that there is an unlimited supply of labour from immigraion means than business can undercut.

Most of the private sector in this country is ununionised and people find work where they can. And frankly if you got involved in union activity in construction you just wouldn't get any work.

The under cutting of wages has been created by the businesses. Not the migrants. If you look at other industries such as caring zero hours contracts where not introduced due to migrants. It is due to business.

What ridiculous logic. It is 'business' to pay the least you can get away with. 'Business' can only get away with paying poor salaries if there are enough people prepared to accept them. So yes, importing lots of migrants with the net result of suppressing wages and it is because of migrants, not business.

if you got involved in union activity in construction you just wouldn't get any work

I know this, and the Shrewsbury two case showed how vicious this can be. However if enough people organise, what can the bosses do?.
Organising collective action to maximise pay and conditions for all the workers, is what works to improve pay, not removing 'foreign' workers, unless that has actually happened already?
Has pay gone up in the building trades since Brexit?.

Woman12345
There are no unions there. In fact there is a warning apparently in place against trying to organise one - they are unofficially banned.
Yes you can complain . You may get compensation. But you will lose your job.
This is the reality now.
It is a complex situation , I don't believe there is only 1 cause.
But when large numbers of relatively unskilled people arrived here there were benefits and disadvantages. And people like my brother saw disadvantages.

However if enough people organise, what can the bosses do?

Not employ you. Because there are large numbers of people looking for work the overwhelming majority of construction workers are now self employed although they may well work on a basis that should probably count as at least fixed term contracts. But if you have loads and loads of people who will take poor terms and wouldn't ask for rights or decent conditions why would you employ someone who would. And who are the people most likely to accept those terms? Yep. Transient migrants.

DH is actually a migrant but a settled one. It's not migrants per se that are the problem but short term transient ones who are prepared to accept poor pay and conditions because it's short term.

The labour party has a lot to answer for including failing to repeal 1992 Trade Union Act.

I'd probably do the same in your brother's situation. Banning trade unions is in breach of all sorts of international human rights legislation. I think the ECHR, which is separate from the EU.
It started with the miners' strike.

Used to be that just crumby totalitarian regimes banned unions, it's a disgrace, and as well as pay and conditions, it's the safety of workers which is at risk too. Especially in construction.

But, has pay and job security improved since June?

Bill, one of the opportunities that being in the EU brings is to broaden your intellectual and social horizons. That's only one facet but one that is important to me. Yes, I would like her to study and work in Europe. Why wouldn't I? Surely the enduring hallmark of the working classes is to desire social mobility for their children? To work hard so they can have it better?
Our universities are likely to be decimated by Brexit. Research funding is vanishing, as are EU students which provide a significant amount of revenue. So, one of the benefits of EU membership is that it helps our universities maintain their world class status. I'd like my daughter to benefit from that education.

Also, youth unemplpyment is an issue everywhere not just in EU member states.

As a nation, we have only ever had a few periods in history when our birth rate exceeded our death rate. In short, we simply do not produce enough people to maintain the economic status which we are accustomed to. Nor to pay the taxes needed for our public and social services.
As it happens, my dad was employed by a prolific, local, mineral-based, hard-labour industry since he was 15 (being deliberately obtuse for fear of outing myself). Now, that industry is almost completely gone. Not because of the EU but because resources and labour were more plentiful in South America. That's globalisation. And laissez-faire economic policy from our government.

For what it's worth, myself and my daughter will be fine. I'm skilled enough to be able to work anywhere. But it's not just about me - people will, on the whole, be far worse off because of this.

Also, I quite like not having to worry about our food standards. Why hello there chlorinated chicken.

hogs

But you don't know things will be far worse off that's guess work isn't it? It might be or equally it might be fantastic when all is sorted so we all have to pull together, support Brexit and go forward together. That's the only option

Also, I take most voter demographics with a large pinch of salt. Class itself now is pretty hard to define through stats (sociologists are constantly wrestling with it). Can I ask whether it is having a mortgage that makes you middle class? Or is it the job title that you give to the polsters? Perhaps your address? Your age? Gender?
I only know 3 people who voted out. And my entire family mostly live on benefits in an arse-end part of the country which strongly voted leave. Of the 3 leavers I know, 2 of them were very middle class military, 1 was an engineer (who has never struggled for work). Everyone else I know was vocally remain.

I admire your optimism but I cannot see how things will be better. There isn't the money in this country to make it so.
And as for supporting Brexit? Hell no. I'm not supporting anything that I believe to be wrong and detrimental to the future of my country.

But, has pay and job security improved since June?

Article 50 was only triggered days ago. Not much has changed since June. I wouldn't have expected much if any difference at this point.

Doubt Oxbridge will be decimated by brexit. Fewer foreign students may mean my gdd has a better chance of s place.

Oxbridge are not the only universities. Their funding will be hit, but they will weather it better than most. But no, it probably won't increase your gdd's chances a great deal because they attract far more students from places outside of the EU than most othe institutions do.

Bill fair enough. Interesting posts on construction though, thanks.
If British working class had not been so shat on by business, lack of workers rights, trade union representation, this could have been a much smoother transition. And continuing free higher education for all citizens would have made this country a very different place. There are reasons for limiting education to the rich.

Trades unions would also have been useful for protecting existing workers from cheap incomer labour, as closed shops could have been used to do that.

It was British governments, and tory ones at that, who caused decimation of British workers' rights, not the EU.

But we are where we are.

Ok Bill twist your logic round.

When the Irish came...they apparently undercut the English. When the Carribean came likewise. When the Asians came. ..you get the drift

Immigrants come. Businesses spot opportunity . Wages change. Businesses don't have to reduce wages. But they do Unions could organise against them but they cant due to oppressive legistaion. Governments could allow them to do this but they dont as they are on the side of the businesses. It's the crap version of capatalism we have

Instead OUR government allows unions to be crushed. Workers to not be protected. Wages to decrease. Taxpayers to make up the shortfall with benefits. Immigrants to be blamed

Who do you think is really making the money. And who is proping them up? Keep blaming the EU. But the rights of workers and their wages will decrease under brexit and or deals will be made with it he nations for even cheaper immigrants to.come into our industries

sos that is ridiculous of course it won't help your gdd. The majority of overseas students are not from the EU anyway. And they pay a fortune. What is more likely the EU funding being taken away will mean eminent professers moving out of the UK. The universities are very worried about this as see above most of their top money is from overseas. These students and their cash may follow the educators

Closed shop unions are banned under the European Human Rights Act.

The EU has also ended centralised wage negotiation by unions in all member states to increase competitiveness. The EU actually tried to limit workers right to strike with the Monti II regulation but was stopped by national parliaments by the 'yellow card' system introduced by the Lisbon treaty. The EU courts have also defended the rights of companies to import cheaper workers from other countries which allows them to circumvent unions.

The EU is not a socialist utopia. It's a globalist 'new liberal' organisation which is very much invested in making the rich richer.

When the Irish came...they apparently undercut the English. When the Carribean came likewise. When the Asians came. ..you get the drift

The Irish have always been able to work here. Non-EU migrant waves have largely been to fill specific needs such as construction shortages, cotton production and more recently we have had a need for science and engineering skills. And it's always been controlled to some extent.

Free movement is different from that because it's almost totally uncontrolled and has the biggest impact on jobs for which their are no shortages meaning downward pressure on wages and conditions is dramatic. Caribbean and Asian immigration never involved huge waves of low or no skilled workers going into competition in locations and professions where there was no great need for workers other than to lower their wages.

Oh. And see above ^^. The EU is not some utopia for unionised labour. Quite the opposite.

Bill that has zero to do with my post wrt Our governments actions against our own workers does it?

The EU doesn't define our wages or our minimum wage or the disgusting way our benefits system acts as a tax incentive for big business. Or how it has blamed immigrants for its own policies

Or that they will do deals with anyone to undercut our own workers. Buts that's ok

Bill you are clearly too young to remember no blacks no irish no dogs and as s a decent of carribean and irish you don't know what you are talking about

They came over quite often over qualified and poor. They were underpaid and treated awfully. Due to the lack of legislation at the time it was possible to pay them less than everyone else. That changed. So when businesses took advantage of immigrants recently they had to lower wages....or it would have been discrimination. Think about it.

I guess you would rather we went back to the 50s and treated all immigrants like dirt and underpaid them. And you wonder why people question motivation regarding views about immigrants

Bill I'm sorry that your family suffered. I have seen similar posts by you on other threads and you seem to assume that other people's attitude towards that was "to suck it up". I'm not sure where that comes from, or why it makes it OK for people to suffer because of Brexit (remember my friend I wrote of upthread which stands to lose home, job, pension, access to healthcare and could be forcibly split from her husband and children).

It sounds like your husband's employers were breaking the law with a least some of the issues you mention. That had nothing to do with the EU. I hope things work out for you and Brexit delivers the solutions you hope for - but I think the latter is unlikely.

@financialiasco "had a brief bit of hope when Tony Blair got involved"

Wtf?! 😂

BillSykesDogFair enough. Interesting, thanks, and I see that it's not a socialist utopia, but don't think that's on the cards in Brexit Britain, but I get that the thinking was, it couldn't be worse.