Migrant workers

[4foxsake]

I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it:
AIBU to think that any unemployed person who voted for Brexit on the basis that 'immigrants are coming over here & taking our jobs' should now step up to the plate...

Fruit and veg farmers facing migrant labour shortages - www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40354331

When fruit and veg farmers pay a living wage then the unemployed should. The problem isn't migrants, it's the class who want mass immigration purely so they can exploit them as cheap labour with no rights.

When fruit and veg farmers pay a living wage then the unemployed should

They are bound by the same minimum wage legislation as everyone else you know...

When fruit and veg farmers pay a living wage

That's when consumers pay a living wage-price ?

If we all pay 20% more for our fruit and veg .....

Migrant labour (not just farming but factories and big companies like sports direct too) usually get housed in cheap accomodation, the cost of which is then deducted from the person's wages. So yes often companies do get away with paying less than minimum wage.

I was an immigrant working in the care sector until recently (I have achieved my UK citizenship). I thought the "they took our jobs" crowd was fictional until I encountered one who was allegedly my friend, several years ago. This person was a single mother of three who didn't work and had been on benefits for quite some time (which I never, ever judged her for). However she began to make digs at immigrants including the phrase "coming here and taking our jobs." Our jobs. She would often excuse me if I was present during one of her rants, as I "didn't count"--probably because I am white and from an affluent country.

I know several other immigrants working in the care sector and there is an overall worker shortage in our area in the care field, so I find the idea of job-stealing immigrants preposterous. Nobody wants these jobs, the immigrants are the ones stepping up and doing the dirty work.

I particularly like the Schroedinger immigrants, the ones who are simultaneously coming over here to both scrounge off our welfare state and steal our jobs

4focsake. Apparently we also steal people's nice flats while simultaneously living with 20 to 30 people in social housing sublets. And we send thousands and thousands of Euros each months to our families in Europe. All of us migrant do that. -I have only myself to blame for reading the dailymail comments-

Some people are prepared to put themselves out enough to move to a different country to take whatever crappy job they can in the hope that it'll lead to something better. Some people can't put themselves out enough to take a job in the next town, there'll always be some excuse.

Meanwhile, automation, the real threat to people's jobs, marches on apace as everyone moves to using the self service tills without a thought to the 5 cashiers who've just lost their jobs to a machine.

Many farmers must have been relying on migrant labour from eastern Europe before these countries joined the EU in 2004 or later. I had a holiday job raspberry picking in 1996 and most of the workers were Polish. Not that Brexit will help matters of course.

If they can't get enough European workers and British people aren't able or willing to do the work, then I presume either prices will go up or we will have to import more produce from elsewhere.

Did there also used to be some kind of summer agricultural work scheme for students?

Migrant labour (not just farming but factories and big companies like sports direct too) usually get housed in cheap accomodation, the cost of which is then deducted from the person's wages. So yes often companies do get away with paying less than minimum wage.

There is a statutory deduction of £44.80 / week.

I would guess it costs more than that to house workers.

Ghosts that rings a bell, I'm sure I remember people fruit picking in the uni holidays (early 90s).

Actually we don't NEED migrant labour if the local community would rouse themselves up of their arses to do it and to commit to the graft levels. But benefits prevents that because:

A. They don't have to
B. If they wanted to its seasonal work and they can't actually come off benefits and easily go back on again.

There needs to be a way to enable that to happen, it is not about those greedy farmers wanting cheap absurd labour .

Prices will rise and so they should. Please don't suggest more imports as the solution. Bad for the earth and terrible for food security in the U.K.

People saying the local community should get off their arses should get their head out of their own arse and go and pick some spuds

I remember a regular at my pub saying the 'they took our jobs spiel' ... he had a good job himself and his Australian friend was an it taken a back and offended ... again he received the 'not you' because he was white and Australia is rich ... laughable

seasonal labour is not useful to settled UK residents really, is it? my family used to do it in the 40s, going from the Midlands to pick fruit in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire in the summer. They would leave their husbands at home doing their mining jobs. Ditto Scottish and Irish tattie howkers. But the way we live now, with rent to pay each month, doesn't lend itself to only having work for a summer, does it? Also the population is used to a glut of cheaper imported fruits all year round. It's a complex issue for sure.

I particularly like the Schroedinger immigrants, the ones who are simultaneously coming over here to both scrounge off our welfare state and steal our jobs

LOL yes this is funny.

If they wanted to its seasonal work and they can't actually come off benefits and easily go back on again.

This is actually a problem - the benefits and tax credit system needs to be more flexible so that you can pick up extra hours and not have all your benfetis stopped and it being a nightmare to go back on.

Who picked the fruit/served in shops/looked after people etc before we had migrant workers?

we did! see my post above. Then students in their summer breaks.... so in my family it was the women and children. There would be camping trips in the summer from the industrial regions and women and children would go and pick fruit for a small wage and some fresh air.

The growing season is longer now, thanks to polytunnels and the like, so it doesn't fit so well with students. Also, obviously you can't take the kids along anymore; not like the old Hop picking days!

The problem isn't migrants, it's the class who want mass immigration purely so they can exploit them as cheap labour with no rights.

It's tricky, this subject.

A close friend of mine used to work in a factory (you would know the name of the product) in the late 90s and early noughties on a rolling annual temp contract. It was in an area that was notorious for poor employment opportunities, and the work force was entirely British. Then, over a period of six months, management stopped renewing contracts for the British workers and the workforce was entirely replaced by Polish EU migrants. My friend lost his job after working there for nine years, as did everyone else. The British workers were just thrown on the dole.

My friend took them to a tribunal over it and, unfortunately, lost. His belief was not that the factory thought they could pay the migrant workers less per se, but more that migrant workers were not aware of their rights in terms of overtime, health and safety, bank holidays, regulatory breaks etc so they were easier to deal with and there was more leeway for the factory to operate in those "grey areas". Whereas a British worker would have raised a health and safety concern over being expected to load very heavy weights onto pallets for an extensive period of time, the migrant workers just did it and never said anything, even when they threw their backs out or suffered injuries.

I've come across the same story elsewhere, particularly in factory environments. It's not that these employers can pay less in hourly wages, but more that they can get round other types of regulations with migrant workers.

I live in Worcestershire and did a few seasonal agricultural jobs in my late teens. Almost all the other labourers in the field were travellers - either traditional gypsies who moved with the work or New Age travellers getting a few quid to sustain their lifestyle for a few more weeks. Late 80s, that.

The farm I used to work for used to straight up falsify timesheets to make it look like people were working less hours for the same pay as the longer hours they actually worked. You could either like it or lump it.

In the past I've done retail, care work, call centres etc and fruit picking was far worse than all of them.

The farmers here go straight to eastern europe to recruit seasonal staff. Their jobs are never advertised at the job center.

QuietCorday, I'm in the same boat. I work in a factory on a zero hours contract and the agency I work for lost its contract and we were transferred to the new Polish agency's contract. I'm now one of maybe six non eastern European workers.
Recently work ran short and we found we were not being given hours in favour of the other workers. Not only has there been a language barrier fighting for our hours but pointing out that having worked there for three years my hours should come before someone having worked one day fell on deaf ears.
Incidentally we were asking for the longest served workers to be given hours, three of which were from Poland. All sorted now.
We've found the eastern Europeans will work any hours and , more importantly, longer hours than us. Not sure if it's because they want to or because they feel they can't say no.