Fruit picking Jobs

[billysboy]

With so many Fruit Picking Jobs available aibu to think that a few of the people already in this country would want to take them up

It feels as if we are paying 1m to stay at home rather than take up this work
Its hard work no doubt but also pays £10-15 an hour is it beneath too many people?

There was already a thread about this. Farmers don't want workers from the UK—they are too slow and don't know what they're doing. The migratory fruit pickers do this all the time and are expert at it. They go from country to country. Letting a bunch of novices loose on your crops is a good way for a farmer to throw away any chance of a profit.

If like millions you live in a large city you are not geographically close to a fruit farm. What do you expect people to do move away from their home and family and pick fruit in the country side.

The migratory fruit pickers do this all the time and are expert at it.

Someone shared a video where the foreign workers described receiving initial training. Something like 'I didn't do any work where I was not shown what to do'

Come on. Even a seasoned picker had to have been a novice once. So that excuse doesn't quite wash.

I think farmers should have thought before voting for brexit. This is not a virus specific problem.

When I looked online it was about £7 or £8 an hour maximum.

An organic farm near me has according to them been deluged with applicants. I wondered if that's because they already have a larger proportion of British pickers than other farms, are known for treating workers well, are a big name or if they are more accessible to two cities. They have said previously the availability of cheap European labour had driven down pay and conditions for agricultural workers damaging the sector.

I remember stories a few years ago about a sandwich factory in Northampton that wrote an article stating they were forced to recruit abroad. It turned out that numerous locals had applied for jobs and been ignored. I'd worked in a similar factory in a different town at a young age and regret the loss of jobs for local people. It was hard, cold work but plenty of us were willing to do it. A few years later where jobs were advertised locally it was a requirement to be able to speak Polish to work there. Not a skill a lot of local 18 year olds had.

I think farmers prefer workers from Eastern Europe because they put up with poor loving arrangements, poor conditions and long hours. They work harder and faster.
Most of these jobs require live in workers for the season. Some people can’t afford to do that I imagine, or travel the long distances required if they don’t live nearby. Often farms are not near public transport so a community from a similar area who speak the same language works well.

Living not loving!

@Kokapetl same, my newsfeed is full of people confused as to why there are complaints of not enough or no applicants when they themselves have either not heard back at all or been told positions are filled. Something is going wrong

The problem is that foreigners do it for less money. If they stopped working these type of jobs the employers would invest the money in machinery and automate the processes. They wouldnt just pay more to hire (slow working) brits. So once immigrants are gone - the employers inevitably will have to spend more money on their agriculture business and that will lead to massive increases in food prices. To be frank I have already noticed prices of vegs and meat spiking up. It will only go up once the immigrantion oa fully stopped. But thats the price people agreed to pay isnt it?

@Bluehues it is not really a rocket science is it. Farmers dont want to hire brits as they are slower and would do half work for the same MW. Immigrants do it fast and efficient, without moaning and complaining and taking sick days off. Speak to local famers, they can explain this to you. They will rather invest the extra money in machinery and robots but not pay more to brits as they are simply not a reliable workforce

So in some senses this type of immigration has been detrimental to the traditional WC or the now the trying to work class.

@FromZeroToHero you can't automate or machine pick soft fruits and a lot of vegetables- it just cannot be done without damaging fruit.

We have a small amount of our usual foreign workforce returning and they will be working aside UK uni students and teaching them how it is done. We are concerned - our foreign workforce are skilled and fast, the UK workforce won't be, but hopefully will be willing to learn. It's disappointing we haven't had the uptake but not surprising - picking in the UK isn't a particularly glamorous job, it can be cold, wet and hard physical work. Our seasonal workers are offered HMOs on site, so it's not really suitable if you have a family, and we are remote in terms of local amenities.

@frillyfarmer but all this is ok for immigrants? Theres no chance famers can survive next year if they dont automate it. There must be ways to do it like with everyting else in life. Immigrants will stop coming from 2021.

@frillyfarmer If farmers are so concerned about getting staff, then time for an upgrade for pay and terms and conditions. Believe it or not, most people don't want to be billed £57 a week for living in shit caravan or portacabin with inadequate cooking and washing facilities. It has been easy for farmers with eastern Europeans who don't want to rock the boat due to fear of being replaced and exploiting the fact that the poor pay for this work in the UK for several months goes a long way in countries like Romania.

rosehip

I think you’re absolutely right

My brother is a trained cabinet maker. He works making him end furniture for an employer who exploits all the staff. Many of them are Polish. He doesn’t pay sick pay and insisted they work through the lockdown. My brother stood up to his employer and got the staff behind him to insist they would not work. The employer still tried to make the Polish and East Europeans come in anyway.
Eventually the employer had to cave in but he wants them all back at work now regardless.
There are too many employers out there exploiting their workers and it’s time it stopped. We have been benefitting from lower prices , he’s. It’s time we grow our own veg or pay higher prices.

Sorry for typos! His employer doesn’t pay holiday pay either.

This one is a non starter.

It's not that British workers won't work well, it's that why would they for terrible working conditions & crap pay?

The farming sector has enjoyed the benefits of cheap migrant labour for too long.

@FromZeroToHero no that’s not rocks science at all, what I’m talking about is people saying brits aren’t applying when they are

The pay is too low for U.K. workers to manage on, this is because the supermarkets don't pay enough to the farmers so we can buy dirt cheap. Capitalism init

I think there may be truth in the fact the the farms don't want local labour. Where I live I am surround by acres and acres of fields being planted up with various crops so I got onto that particular company's website to sign up. It says there are no vacancies. Perhaps they've already made arrangements with migrant workers.

I don’t see why not accepting crappy pay and conditions makes Brits lazy.

The stories about employers elsewhere are interesting. I’ve found myself mentioning Shirebrook in Derbyshire on mumsnet a few times lately, home of a huge Sports Direct factory which caused huge local tensions between a shipped-in East European workforce. Those tensions are easy to google: here’s a Guardian report on how bad conditions were there. I knew such things were happening but perhaps it’s more widespread than I realised.
amp.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/sports-direct-warehouse-work-conditions

🤣