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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Fruit picking Jobs

480 replies

billysboy · 18/04/2020 09:37

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?

OP posts:
rwalker · 18/04/2020 10:22

We have a mushroom farm near us 10 minutes form city centre they offer free minibus picking people up and pay above min wage.
Nobody wants to do it they really struggle to recruit staff.
Normally have workers from abroad living onsite

june2007 · 18/04/2020 10:23

It ounds like a few issues.

  1. They rather not train people up.
  2. They want people to live onsite.
  3. They are antisocial/long hours

But the skeptic in me thinks are the Romanians really getting the minimum wage? And have they approached companies. I mean they could approach a garden centre and see if the staff want to work on the farm. As far as Furlough goes I think I can not work in a competaive job but I could do something like fruit picking. 9But I have 2 children and a oh with long term condition.)

Herpesfreesince03 · 18/04/2020 10:23

I’ve done this a few times. Every employer I’ve had has treated/spoken to the employees like utter shite. It’s absolutely back breaking work, I’ve only lasted a few days at a time and been in agony weeks later. And despite working flat out I’ve earned nowhere fucking near minimum wage, let alone £15 an hour

swg1 · 18/04/2020 10:23

The problem is that allowing this is not at all beneficial for employers.

  1. Lockdown is for at LEAST 3 weeks so you are already losing money.

  2. You don't know if it is over 3 weeks.

  3. If it ends in 3 weeks financially you may have to call staff back in immediately to survive.

  4. But a) they may be fruit picking at the other end of the country and b) living in a caravan which means you may have to quarantine them for 2 further weeks before you reopen.

Not knowing how long this will last gives every incentive for employers to refuse permission.

Howaboutanewname · 18/04/2020 10:23

There must be thousands of uni students who’s usual bar/restaurant/hotel/cafe/tourist attraction seasonal, casual work has dried up. Many of them could live in? My son is desperate to do this job but application has not been acknowledged.

MrsDoylesTeaBags · 18/04/2020 10:26

People being furloughed are not unemployed.

As part of my contract I am on short notice to come back into work and cannot take other paid or unpaid work while I'm on leave.

LIZS · 18/04/2020 10:26

Ds looked at the Land Army initiative but nothing doing in our area, not sure how widely it is being used to recruit. There are plenty of UK students around with few other work opportunities. The Romanians were already contracted last October though.

Snorkelface · 18/04/2020 10:27

The Post Office is recruiting casual mail sorters country wide, also minimum wage, no living on site obviously, just as repetitive, some physical work involved. Any takers?

FreakStar · 18/04/2020 10:30

I wonder what there is to pick in April? I thought fruit picking was an autumn job!

I bet lots of people didn't even think or know about fruit picking until they saw it on the news. I didn't. Maybe they should have advertised it on TV or something!

CMOTDibbler · 18/04/2020 10:31

Round here, there are massive numbers of veg pickers/packers needed. A lot of roles in the pack houses and glasshouses are year round and so even those coming over to work do it year round and live in normal shared houses.
The rest is mostly on the gangmaster system, and most are bussed in from Birmingham 30 miles away afaik.
There is a huge amount of prejudice about working in the fields or packing though. A friend who is from a traveller family who has done it over the years (and in her family its a very traditional thing to do) says it is one of the things that she never told people about as the horror that you'd do that sort of thing was insane.

Abraid2 · 18/04/2020 10:33

I don't want to live on site but would be very happy to work on our local fruit farms. I keep looking at their websites and they come up with 'no jobs' listed.

noraclavicle · 18/04/2020 10:33

People did apply from the UK - the Yes Tribe FB page had lots of people posting that they had done so and never heard back.

The Guardian headline spins this as British workers ‘rejecting’ roles which feeds directly in to the ‘Brits are too lazy’ narrative - and then you get the OP and further posters using the ‘beneath people’ and ‘apparently hardly anyone applied’ lines.

That Guardian article then thankfully does go on to say ‘the main barriers were the length of the contract, location of the farm, and inability to work full-time because of care responsibilities’ and explains some of the barriers preventing the UK workers who have applied in large numbers from taking up jobs.

These arrogant Graun-headline attitudes infuriate me. They’re just as lazy and kneejerk as your standard Daily Mail/Sun ‘They’re stealing our jobs’ ones, frankly. I remember sitting in a ‘progressive’ friend’s multi-million pound house with all her expensively-educated friends nodding sagely along while she derided the lazy, racist Brits who ‘refuse’ to do this work. Would you do it, love? Could you run a house and lifestyle a tenth this luxurious on the wages it offers? Send your kid to her private school? Actually see your kids for the contract duration? Face it you just want your nice veg at a cheap price,
and not to have to actually think about food supply chains and working conditions and whether wages can actually support living breathing humans with family responsibilities. Or how political and economic decisions lead us to this situation.

So sorry, OP, I do think it’s right to ask questions about the issue, but with your ‘beneath people’ tone I think YABU. And that Graun headline most certainly is.

SonjaMorgan · 18/04/2020 10:34

There are none of these jobs local to me. I do live in a rural location and would be willing to take on the work and travel. I am not willing nor able to leave my family and live in a caravan.

We are growing our own fruit this year and most of our vegetables.

There is also the issue of having people trained. I can grow fruit and veg but have no idea how they do this on a grand scale.

noraclavicle · 18/04/2020 10:34

I wonder what there is to pick in April? I thought fruit picking was an autumn job!

Vegetables

june2007 · 18/04/2020 10:35

Freak star, strawberries, raspberries, currents, beans, salad veg.

LuluJakey1 · 18/04/2020 10:35

We all contribute to making this happen. We want food to be cheap and bought in one place so can take the car and load it up easily so we use supermarkets.

They want to maximise their profits and keep their costs as low as possible so they build big units with huge car parks, pay suppliers as little as possible, buy massive amounts to get stuff even cheaper, and they dominate the market. They waste huge amounts of food.

Producers have to cut their costs to deal with supermarkets - and there is almost no one else left to deal with except the companies that produce for supermarkets who also want stuff as cheap as possible.

The days of farmers employing people on farms from local land workers have long gone - there is no job security at all, it is all seasonal, and they are paid on the basis of how much they pick. Other jobs are done by machines now so there is no year round work. British people won't do the work - it is often cold, dirty, very physical, long hours and poorly paid.
A lot of what was traditional farming has become corporate farming with animals kept penned up constantly in big industrial units for milk and meat production. Millions of gallons of milk are poured away every week because we don't need it - and the EU subsidises the businesses for it.

If we were prepared to pay more for food, and avoided supermarkets, used our local high streets, lived on what is in season instead of wanting strawberries in January and other things that are imported out if season, we could have a better British farming industry and workers could be paid more. Farm workers often had tied cottages- very rare now, they are usually turned into holiday lets.

Our demand for cheap food, processed crap, and convenient one-stop shopping created this.

MummBraTheEverLeaking · 18/04/2020 10:36

I haven't looked into this but it seems like the points June2007 has made things have changed from back in the day (I mean the early 80s), as my mum did this job. You could take the kids too, didn't have to live on site and they collected you. I have clear memories of sitting in the van with her and then playing around the fields and orchards.

As a pp said perhaps the cheaper prices have called for cheaper labour and by the sounds of it, conditions that have put people off too. Which seems to be the nature of the job market these days, people wanting loads of experience, a multitude of skills, and high level results for fuck all pay.

OneandTwenty · 18/04/2020 10:37

Well, it IS hard work, it IS long-ish hours, and it's not a holiday. It can be really hard when it's pissing with rain all day, or boiling hot and you are not used to physical effort.

Far too much effort for people who actually don't really need a job and are happy as they are.

For the records, I have done fruit picking in the past, because it was good money. I am not surprised they can't find candidates. It's already difficult to find office workers who accept to work weekends, so physical work? na, it won't be popular.

HandfulOfDust · 18/04/2020 10:38

My daughter applied. However the application process was so negative that it put her off - it strongly emphasises how repetitive, dull and needing high accuracy it is.

To be fair that seems absolutely daft. Of course fruit picking will be dull and repetitive and require accuracy. The reason they emphasize that in the application process is to avoid time wasters who turn up and quit after a day because they were too silly to realise what the job would actually entail.

MaxNormal · 18/04/2020 10:39

But the skeptic in me thinks are the Romanians really getting the minimum wage?

You're paid per amount you pick, if you're skilled that works out to above minimum wage. If not, it doesn't and I believe that they legally then have to dismiss you.
I can't see many people who are not either experienced or at least young and fit picking enough to meet the minimum wage requirements.

The other issue is needing to live on site, entirely impractical for people with families.

Finally, our inflexible benefits system. These are temporary jobs and not worth the heartache of signing off UC only to then have a five week wait to get back on it at the other end. And if you've got children, I don't imagine it'll be any more money anyway.

1forsorrow · 18/04/2020 10:40

What a sneery thread. What are we supposed to do..March people to their nearest field with a gun to their heads? No but I do think we could say, "If you want 80% of furlough pay you need to do something productive for 80% of your normal hours." Healthy people, some on £2,500 a month, doing nothing in return isn't reasonable.

YangShanPo · 18/04/2020 10:40

I think loads of British people want these jobs and would work hard but the growers prefer to get people they can underpay in sneaky ways and mistreat. It's true you would have to pay Brits the minimum wage and treat them fairly and that might make the cost of fruit go up but the government could intervene with some schemes that would help to keep things working and would be balanced out by less universal credit payments to those who have lost their jobs. It's would be much fairer all round and better for this country.

Grinchbinch · 18/04/2020 10:40

OK so I wanted to do this but
A) terms of my furlough are no other work
B) although I live near LOADS of these places (5 - 10 miles) there's nowhere I actually could get to
C) the ones near me aren't hiring apparently
D) I'm not travelling hundreds of miles then paying 90 quid a week out of min wage work to sleep in a shed when I would still have to pay my own rent
E) it's actually paid as piece work and I am not in peak condition have been doing a desk job for years. Yes I am fit and able and would be fine after a couple of weeks but I would not earn min wage to start + they want people who are experienced, fit and can jump straight in.

And I don't even have kids or caring responsibilities!!

ifonly4 · 18/04/2020 10:41

I had a look a few weeks ago thinking of DD, it said they were no longer taking applications. So proud of her though, she's still gone out and got herself a job and it sounds like they'll be some hours after lockdown.

SusieOwl4 · 18/04/2020 10:43

A lot of people applied but when they found out the hours /pay / conditions a lot dropped out. I am sure it makes benefits claiming complicated as well?

But if you are furloughed you can work elsewhere . That is correct .