Why aren't people on benefits be asked to pick fruit? Why bring in immigrants?

[quietandcomplex]

Can someone explain to me why, when there are so many unemployed and on benefits, they aren't picking fruit for the farmers? Why bring immigrants into the country to do the job? This is not a political or racist or anything other post, it does not make sense to me, what am I missing?

These should all be proper jobs. The best way of bringing people off benefits is to create living wage jobs and so something about the housing crisis.

Ok, ignore me. @Ponoka7 has answered my q as I was typing it.

See my post just before this one as to why I couldn't do that job either 🙄

Fuck fruit picking, bring back workhouses

Jesus!

Have you ever been on benefits OP?
It's fucking grim
Have a look at how much they get per week /month, it's depressing

Yes but you’ve cherry picked a few groups who can’t.

MANY are perfectly capable but CBA.

MANY are just plain lazy, like my mum’s neighbours children. He has 3 children- I say children they’re actually all in their twenties and are happy to live off the bank of mum and dad. They’re too lazy to walk the dogs, go food shopping, do washing - their parents do all that for them and work full time. Are they holding out for a management position perhaps ? 😂

YANBU OP but you’ll be shot down in flames on mn.

"as why would a farmer choose an unfit reluctant lazy British person over a fit, motivated, efficient East European?"

Most warehouses are heavy going. We have lots of physically demanding jobs with long hours. We do have a equivalent working population that can do the work that the Eastern Europeans do, but we need better wages. They can buy houses in their country with the wages earned. On those wages we become homeless and use food banks. Can we end the rhetoric around 'the lazy British', the reasons are far more complex.

Jesus Christ…

Fruit picking is a skilled and physical job and farmers need to be extremely competitive. It doesn't matter if you are willing to pay £2 for a strawberry, the majority of the population cannot/will not do that.

The UKs unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 yrs & for the first time ever there are more jobs available than workers. Some of this has been driven by the "silver exodus",

"Over one in four (27 per cent) people aged 50 to 64 are neither in work nor looking for work – up from 25.4 per cent two years ago."

Not the sort of question that you ask on here but of course YANBU.

Do you mean pick fruit in return for benefits? Or for actual nmw?

Any way, my idiot brother suggested to me when there was first a shortage of pickers (was that in lockdown?) That I apply. When i asked how he suggested I got there he replied "well it's not my fault you can't drive!" I mean, it isn't his fault. But not being his fault doesn't mean I can get there. And I was technically employed, just off sick.

And I wouldn't have the first clue how to mend a pot hole in the road! I think we should leave that to the skilled workers.

Maybe because the people on benefits don't live anywhere near the farms where the fruit is? Do you expect them to pay rent on where they currently live, move to another part of the country, possibly leave family/pets/responsibilites all for a measly wage. Also some people wouldn't be physically capable of fruit picking, it's hard work and not all on benefits are young and fit. I could probably think of more reasons, but that's enough!

Op I sort of agree.
The location arguments don't make sense the immigrants are hardly local.

It would make more sense to employ students in a summer job capacity.

The NMW is a issue, I'm sure the farms get round it by providing lodge (poor conditions on site) and the pickers being paid by the weight of what they pick rather than per hour.

Fruit picking is not an "unskilled' job. It's also hard, physical work which many people would find extremely challenging, not to mention that they would be asked to leave if they weren't productive enough.

Most people don't live in the area where the work is.

If you come off benefits to work in a seasonal job you have to reapply for them which takes weeks, possibly ending up with you in debt that you can't pay back.

A very large proportion of people on benefits are either unable to work due to their health or caring responsibilities OR they already work and can't manage because wages are low.

You know all this information is freely available online so why don't you read about it instead of starting goady threads like this?

Course it isn't.
It's just more benefit bashing.

This kind of stuff is usually pushed by the poorly informed people that believe the unemployed of the country take their hard earned tax money.
That there's
"millions that have never worked"
They always know 1 family that 'ain't not never worked a day on their lives they ain't not never'
Or there's a neighbour that never goes to work and still has the latest stuff and holidays abroad every fortnight.

Yadda Yadda Yadda

It's what the Tories want. That's why they push it. They don't tell the truth, that There's fewer than 400k long term unemployed in this country.
That includes in 'welfare' are pensions. Pensions make up 42% of the welfare bill, unemployelment makes up less than 2%
Etc.

I'm 'on benefits'. I also have a full time job.

This adds to other right-wing half-formed thoughts i have read this week.

The others being: "why do we need heating because we managed for thousands of years without it"

"Since prisons so expensive to run, why don't prisoners pay?"

It feels punishment-based. Someone isn't doing what the op thinks they should be doing, complaining as a result of not doing what they should be doing or simply offending a simplistic world view. Therefore, they need to be punished (picking fruit, freezing or paying for punishment).

Dd is 10. She often asks simple-seeming questions. I encourage her to explore different ideas and solutions, with empathy. Unfortuantely there are adults who can't or are too lazy.

I have picked fruit in England many years ago. We lived in communal huts, there was no guarantee of work (lists were put up each evening of who was working next day), much of the work was paid per amount picked (that was brutal) and most people there were non-British. It’s seasonal, no guaranteed income and would completely mess up their benefits. As a young person I loved it but I lived on cheese and cider and it’s really not a job anyone with any kind of restriction could do.

The biggest numbers on benefits are those in receipt of the state pension. So you think pensioners ought to be doing something to earn their pension?

Are you not concerned with yhe thousands that have to claim benefits OP to top up their wages who work full time, OP? Why ? Because their wages are too low to survive. So even working full time isn't a way out of poverty now in this country, what a fantastic situation our government has caused eh ? Wages are so bloody low and the cost of living continues to rise that even working yer arse off isn't a way out of poverty . And you want to make people pick fruit.😂

Yeah I'll just ditch my Teaching Assistant job, disabled children and elderly mother oop north and eff off down to a farm somewhere warmer in the south. Great idea thanks OP! Wish the DWP had thought of it sooner to sort out all us pesky benefits claimants. Nice try with the bait

Fruit picking us paid as piece work, of course people need to be paid minimum wage and new pickers initially have wage topped up, if they don’t quickly get fast enough to earn minimum wages they’re out of work. Skilled pickers will get above NMW. When during Covid they tried to employ a British workforce it was very difficult to get people willing and able to pick.

I remember in the 90s farms near us (I lived in the Fens) would employ teens and housewives to pick potatoes, so it did used to be UK workers. I don’t think the minimum wage had come in then.

This also completely misses the point that loads of people/families 'on benefits' work as well so this would be a second job. So clearly ridiculous

Another point is: Many people on benefits are out there canvassing for jobs that they have skills, qualifications and possibly previous experience in.

Why should anyone be denied the opportunity to apply for better paid jobs, a career, with stability and a future.

They can’t be in a field and attending job interviews etc. at the same time.