Fruit picking? Are they f***ing serious?

[emmcan]

So whichever hapless muppet got dragged out today to do the daily lying to the gullible has suggested that furloughed workers could br picking fruit.

Fuck me, how fucking badly run is this shitshow?

The reason that we have had a two decades of migrant workers doing these jobs is because British people are too lazy and incompetent to do them.

And now they expect furloughed workers to head out into the fields and get their hands dirty?

It will happen, in a fashion, as they will just stop paying money to people who refuse to work, but it will be an appalling form of slave labour.

...all weathers.

many employers have added a condition that you can't work for another employer while on furlough

That needs challenging as totally ridiculous in a national emergency situation. If someone is willing and able to pick fruit or empty domestic bins instead of restaurant bins or whatever, then pointless rules that get in the way of getting things done need outlawing.

am furloughed and looked into this but was told by local business chamber of commerce rep I would be emergency taxed if I did this so I would be working for potentially £4 an hour

You might be emergency taxed in the short term but it will work out overall for the tax year. You'd only be working for about £4 an hour, if you earn more than £50k after pension contributions in your main job so pay 40% tax on all your fruit picking earnings, but it would actually slightly more than that as it would be £8.72 minus 42% to include NI contributions which I think are 2% above £50k.

...they simply couldn’t get staff who didn’t think the work was beneath them.

It's the welfare regulations that rule out seasonal work. Not feeling that seasonal work is beneath them. That and the huge problem of horribly low income meaning that no interruption to it can be weathered.

Worries about signing off and then back onto benefits are the real impediments to seasonal work.

Nobody in seasonal employment makes enough to save a cushion to tide them over until their application for benefits is reapproved when the season is over.

Working can actually make someone's income unpredictable, and meanwhile rent and utility bills must be paid. Going into arrears is a huge deal for people living on very little.

The vast majority of households with income from work are also receiving benefits. This means in effect that employers' bottom lines are subsidised by the taxpayers, and that means you, the good people of Mumsnet.

There are people self isolating who are struggling to get shopping delivered, there are care homes that are short staffed, all sorts of things. Are some people so full of their own importance that they think they are above helping?

There are people employed for money to do all of that.
They will be unemployed when people who can afford to work for no cost to the care homes and the supermarkets show up.

Where do you send those newly unemployed people?

The supermarkets are making money hand over fist. They can pay people to deliver groceries.
Care homes need healthy people. Not a bunch of unknown people who may or may not have antibodies to the virus. And they need trained people who can lift, bathe, toilet, spoon feed, administer medicines, monitor conditions like small strokes, heart conditions, COPD. People with training and experience in other words. Do you think all workers do in care homes is swan around jollying residents up and call them 'dear'?

Honestly, please think just a little about the ramifications of what you are suggesting.

Are they really so precious that they couldn't do something quite simple like collect prescriptions, assist in schools or care homes. No one is forcing them to take the money. I don't think everyone should be picking fruit, I don't even think they should have to do a fulltime job but I do think it is reasonable to give something back.

Let the pharmacies and supermarkets and care homes hire genuinely unemployed people who could use work experience and the money and a good reference from a manager.

Suggesting that these places take on people for free is saying 'to those who have much shall be given'. These people have money. They have a job. They don't need the experience or the reference.
The employers are making money. Why should the general public subsidise them even more than they already do by working for nothing in their businesses?

And the government should be making it really, really easy for unemployed people who manage to get work at this time to sign back on with no six week gap in income.

That scathing, 'Are they really so precious?' though...

A lot of people here are seriously embarrassing themselves. Do you really have so little idea of how the other half lives?

No one is forcing them to take the money.

They were forced to stop work and they have bills to pay.
Do they all have a 6 month cushion they can live off?

Some people will not have a job to return to.

Many are trying to upgrade skills at this time to make themselves attractive to other employers or other industries. Many are at an age when the likelihood of this happening in a shrinking economy is slim to none.

Many need to save the furlough payment so that when they are forced to sell their homes they will have something in the bank to use for rent payments.

1forsorrow Mon 27-Apr-20 07:52:44

Am I allowed to leave my 11yo son for 9 hours at a time? Or is he supposed to pick fruit too?
There are plenty of other areas that need help, it isn't just fruit picking

So you can just turn up for an hour or two, or whatever days you feel like it, or whenever your child can be parked in front of the TV for a bit?

There is plenty they could do to help without hands on care e.g. in the kitchen, doing laundry, but as I said there are lots of jobs do we really need to pick apart every one? Sounds a bit desperate, if people getting financial help really think they shouldn't have to do anything at least have the balls to say it straight out without all the excuses.

Kitchen - Do you honestly think it takes no skill, training, or previous experience at all to use industrial ovens or kitchen equipment? Takes no skill or training at all to perform proper food storage, hygiene, cleaning, personal safety, food safety, serving dozens of residents meals with attention to dietary needs, nutrition needs, cleaning up afterwards?
Mistakes in the kitchens of care homes can cost lives.

Doing laundry - body fluids and emissions of all kinds find their way into care home laundry. Does this job sound appealing to you?

It is you who are sounding desperate. Your ideas are nonsense 1forsorrow.

Of course people should get their furlough money with no expectation of any work. The expectation is that the money will be used to keep the economy afloat once things start to reopen, when community infection rates drop enough to allow this. It will go to the little cafe, the hairdresser, the barber, the car repair shop, the supermarket, and in turn the employees of those places will be paid and they will be able to afford food, rent, and electricity, and the world will keep on turning.

The alternative is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". A centrally controlled workforce, money meaningless as a means of exchange for goods and services, and mobilisation of the population are all features of the USSR circa 1943.

1forsorrow Mon 27-Apr-20 07:59:40

Q Why the fuck is it their duty to give their time and labour for free to help?
1forsorrow It isn't for free, they are getting up to £2,500 per month.

It is free to the care home.

A place that already has employees.

Why would they continue to pay anyone if they can get people to work for no cost to them?

1forsorrow Mon 27-Apr-20 08:01:39

Q Plus you still wouldn't be allowed to work in the laundry of a care home without all the background checks either.
1forsorrow Yes you would, you just couldn't be left unsupervised until you got your DBS. Maybe you don't know as much as you think you do.

So more work than they might ever be worth then.

Someone paid to mind them just in case.

Right...

1forsorrow Mon 27-Apr-20 08:05:24

Q My husband is furloughed and while he would take on additional tasks I actually prefer him not to when he has the option to reduce the risk of bringing the virus home. If people have to go out fair enough that’s different but otherwise I don’t see why people should increase their exposure to the virus just to “help”.
1forsorrow But you don't mind him taking the money?

The whole point of the lockdown and the closure of businesses is to slow and eventually stop spread of a virus that can be fatal, or cost the NHS a fortune to treat while exposing HCPs to immense danger.

The point of furlough money is to keep people from having to go out and mingle in the community because they need the income. A secondary aim is to make sure people have a little money to put into the economy when it reopens. But that is a bridge to cross when the UK comes to it. Right now the aim is to bring community infection rates down far lower than they were.

What part of 'deadly virus', 'infection rates', 'hospitals overwhelmed' and ' tens of thousands dead' do you not understand, 1forsorrow?

leckford Mon 27-Apr-20 08:15:15

It would help with the obesity epidemic, people outside doing exercise whilst picking. No reason why females can’t do the work. In the past plenty of women would work in fields and leave their baby in the hedge.

Jesus, this thread is an eye opener.

Where I live the local pharmacy can't do deliveries for all prescriptions, just offering to pick up prescriptions for people less mobile is helping.
1forsorrow

LOL.

Let's send out prescriptions for potent painkillers to be delivered by people we don't know too well.

No, can't see a single down side to that.

1forsorrow
I don't think everyone needs to fruit pick, I don't think everyone should do a fulltime job as a volunteer but helping out I do think is reasonable. Millions of people doing a little bit could make such a difference, sometimes just standing on the drive and having a chat with someone who is isolated is a really valuable thing to do. If people are getting 80% of their wage and a lot of free time is that really too much to ask?

But how would you supervise and measure all of that to make sure you are getting full value for your furlough money with all that 'helping out', chatting, etc?

And if it's all to be just neighbourly 'helping out' why can't people just stay home and not spread the virus we are all concerned about that caused this furloughing in the first place?

Isn't is our civic duty to stay well and not to infect other people? Can that not be measured and assigned a financial value? Oh wait...

Ironically a lot of the jobs mentioned were classed by many as being 'unskilled' only a month of so ago
Hairyfairy01

FYI
'Unskilled' doesn't mean 'requiring no training, or aptitude, or specific physical attributes, or availability for any shift'.

Allnamesaregone Mon 27-Apr-20 08:42:07

40 hours a week at minimum wage is not illegal. Lots of people work minimum wage jobs. To say it’s not worth it suggests you feel it’s beneath you

Or maybe, just maybe, it means you have bills to pay, you rely on benefits, and predictability of income is a major cause of stress to you, and if you sign up for seasonal work at minimum wage and then try to sign up again for benefits when the season is over you will have a 6+ week wait for processing of your application during which you will have no income coming in but no letup of rent bills, utility bills, or requests from your children for food.

Lots of people work minimum wage jobs.

Lots of people who work in minimum wage jobs rely on supplemental benefits to stay afloat. The vast majority of welfare recipients work or have at least one person working for minimum wage in their household.

1forsorrow Mon 27-Apr-20 08:44:46

PP Get everywhere open then and just let the virus burn through the population.

1forsorrow
I think you need to speak to Boris about that, unless he is on here I don't think any of us can do much about that.

Wrong.

People can stay home and be paid to do so. This reduces the risk of the virus burning through the population.

How?
People desperate for work because they have no income from their usual jobs and no way to pay bills are more likely to try to work regardless of illness, and spread it to others.

It's almost as if you haven't fully understood why people are being paid to stay home, 1forsorrow.

@firstmentat I agree with you that there is a patronising attitude, and clearly very little contact between EE fruit pickers and British people.

My Irish uncles all spent their university summers picking fruit in western Europe. They left Ireland as soon as exams were over and returned in early October, along with swarms of their fellow students. They worked their way from south to north, following the harvests. The people involved are doctors, professors, leading civil servants, barristers, journalists, engineers (legions of engineers). Many retired now.

Up until the election of Donald Trump, generations of Irish students used to go to the US on J-1 visas to work.

The exploitation of foreign workers is nothing new in the UK and it predates the EEC by decades. Unskilled Irish workers are responsible for most of the infrastructure and postwar house building, not always for fair pay, not always with any thought to health and safety on the job. Plenty more where they came from.

well said, math, i enjoyed reading that.

Tonemeth
Many jobs arent required right now. It's not about safety

And the reason they are not required is?

Safety. No need for non-essential workers to be cramming buses and trains and office building lifts and spreading the virus.

Tonemeth Mon 27-Apr-20 18:30:49

Safety may be part of it, but it isnt the full picture. Many businesses that have shut down didn't need to in the first place.

They needed to shut down so that their employees wouldn't be jamming buses and trains and spreading the virus.

Their products and services were not essential, and therefore the risk to public health from all the employees out and about wasn't worth the benefit.

Hospitals otoh remain open, and toilet paper factories, and supermarkets. This is because they are necessary and the risk of spreading the virus to and among employees by remaining open is worth it.

@wrongsideofhistorymyarse

Yes. I would.

You don’t know me so don’t try telling me what I would or wouldn’t do.

They need to socially distance but there's no issue with fruit picking.
Tonemeth

In the small caravans where fruit pickers are forced to sleep, social distancing will not be possible.

Let's not forget that people were furloughed so they could stay inside. Now posters on this thread want everyone whose furloughed back outside earning their keep, what do you much cleverer people than I think that would do to the peak?