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?

That is one option...

But it wouldn't be a full week earning £77 or that would be way below minimum wage. It would be £10 travel for a days work based on the calculation of £77 equating to 8 hours work. So one day of bus fair.

And yes that is a lot of money when you don't earn a lot. But what makes these people any different from low paid workers who have to pay these costs. It shouldn't be that people not working are better off than them.

I'm not saying the system is great, it's shit. Everyone should have enough money to live on. But if you are able to work and receiving benefits I think you should, in one form or another, Contribute something for that.

A friends DS was an example of this, left school at 16, no one cared or checked he wasn't in FE, odd jobs in warehouses for a week or two at a time, claimed benefits a lot, perfectly fit and healthy enough to pick fruit and stuff like that but preferred to do nothing. He's about 25 now and still the same

OR - and here's a novel idea: we could pay people properly to do these jobs anyway AND pay in-work benefit claimaints enough to do their existing jobs so they don't have to top up a wage that it's not possible to live on.

AND we could have a well-funded benefits system for those unable to work through disability, or who need the in-work top-up that comes through living with disabilities being more expensive than living without, or who can't work because of caring responsibilities.

Or we could just go with the goady right-wing shite spouted on here about people on benefits, have done with it and erect "Arbeit Macht Frei" over the gates to the fruit farms and the job centres.

But if you are able to work and receiving benefits I think you should, in one form or another, Contribute something for that.

You do, of course, realise that the unemployed contribute to taxes...
And that for someone to actually really contribute to society they first have to be earning in the top 40%...

@AyeUpMeDuck But what about those that can work but choose not to?

I work full time as does my husband. We have childcare costs that are crippling us. But we still go to work because that is what needs to be done! It doesn't matter how much people contribute, they are still contributing!

Well, it depends what you mean by contribute. It's absolutely possible for a person to cost the state more by working than not, if they're going to need significant childcare help to do it.

That's not to say the state shouldn't provide this subsidy if people want to work, but let's be clear that it's sometimes a cost. It's not necessarily the case that people who need subsidy to continue working in low paid jobs will subsequently progress and earn more because of it either.

There was a story in the news recently, where UK fruit farms have hired workers from I think it was India or Nepal. Even with the workers paying their own visa, flights & accommodation they still earn enough to take some money home.

To me it makes no sense I believe that local people do not want the work.

8 miles is OK on a bicycle

Those who can work but choose not too a vanishingly small percentage of the whole. The Job Centres role in modern society is to check on them and punish them and force them into absolute poverty.

Why anyone would support people being forced into poverty just as a punishment is beyond me. And why anyone would think threatening a poor person... With more poverty.. would work is also beyond me.

"You poor people better behave or we'll make you poorer.. starve your kids and make you homeless.." Tory Motivational Leaflet - 2024

You’d have to move people to eg Lincolnshire/Cornwall, Tayside, because that’s largely where the crops are. What if they don’t want to or, personal circumstances, can’t go? Are they to be forced. Transport? Who lays it on/pays. Living accommodation? Who lays it on pays. Is it a tent, a caravan? Is it safe/sanitary? Do the costs come from your wages. Emergency at home, what do you do? If you’re sacked, hard, backbreaking work few of us can now do, can’t cope, what happens to you?

I’m going to ask you a question, why in a relatively wealth country like ours do so many of my fellow citizens seem to have effectively had no education, have simply not learned to think? That’s more interesting, isn’t it?

A small percentage but still happens. I wouldn't class the Job Centre as being a punishment either. To have to go to the Job Centre and 'check in' with them through the week is hardly a punishment for those who do nothing!

www.bbc.com/news/business-61603429

It's.more.than checking in. You know that right?

The unemployed person of today is given a set of commitments.

Top of which is that they will spend a set amou t of hours looking for, preparing for and applying for work.
This all has to be evidenced on their Online journal.
The job coaches and other people at the job centre have access to that journal.

If the unemployed person fails to meet their commitments they get sanctioned. It isn't just their spare cash that gets sanctioned either, it's all of their cash. That means rent, food, heat, light all get sanctioned.

I get under £1000 a month total for me and my daughter. If I got sanctioned, I couldn't pay rent, council tax, light, heat etc.

Checking in once a week is not what happens and if you think it is, you are woefully misinformed..

Right.
But if you take an unemployed person and make them work 40 hours per week they are no longer unemployed. They are working full time. For a wage. Not their benefits.
And if the government could force people to do that then there wouldn't be any unemployment so no one would be getting money for nothing. Which would of course be great. But the people who really don't want to work will just do the bare minimum, making it twice as hard for everyone else.

8 miles is OK on a bicycle.
Yes if you can cycle, have a bike, can cycle 16 miles on day that involves many hours of very physical work and don't mind cycling on open limit country roads. Are you up for that?

Because the majority of the "unemployed" on benefits group are either disabled or carers.

Plus the others that aren't if you could arrange unsociable hours childcare accessibility that would be the biggest barrier removed.

Thanks, from one such unemployed bum :)

But rightly so you have to do something to get paid. Surely that's what it's about? If I didn't go to work, I wouldn't get paid and therefore wouldn't be able to pay my bills.

Haven't read the whole thread, but read enough to know I'm just repeating truths other people have pointed out.

1. Unemployment is very low, so that part of the premise is wrong.
2. British people don't want these jobs, the jobs don't compare favourably with simply being on benefits, for various valid reasons people have pointed out.
3. Farmers don't want British workers, who will be less fit, able and motivated than immigrants. (Picking fruit is actually a skilled job, apparently.)

I am however laughing at all the posters talking about the jobs being too far away. As though British fruit farms are closer to Romania than anywhere in England.

There is a valid point buried in the OP though. There's something wrong with using imported workers to do jobs that British people won't do. I don't believe the solutions is forcing British people into the jobs, consequently we need to stop growing fruit as it's not a viable activity in out labour market (once you stop having lower standards for foreigners.) We can start growing fruit again when fruit-picking can be done be machines. (I think technology to do this has already been tested, in very specific circumstances, though I can't remember for what kind of fruit.)

Agree with this.

I know 3 people who signed up to do fruit picking through lockdown - none of them were called.

I am however laughing at all the posters talking about the jobs being too far away. As though British fruit farms are closer to Romania than anywhere in England
There is a valid point buried in the OP though. There's something wrong with using imported workers to do jobs that British people won't do

They tend to be single, younger, motivated and in many cases, travel around Europe doing these agri jobs.... now they stay on the mainland.

Its silly to think 49 yo's Mike and Sue who have sore knees, a bad back, have the Grandchildren on an informal basis and haven't done any manual work for .. well never, are going to be any good picking fruit or Veg on Piece work for Farmer Giles.

Anyhow, pre Brexit, we didn't have a problem with any of this, Farmers happy, EU workers happy, Consumers happy.... so yet again, we've voted to shoot ourselves in the head.

People are not commodities to be judged on productivity, they are individuals who deserve to live their lives as they choose.

This is the most sensible thing anyone has said on this thread.

So what if a tiny number of people, comparatively speaking in population terms, want to sit on their arse and smoke cigarettes paid for with 'taxpayers' money'? I honestly don't give a shit. They aren't taking anything from me, not in real terms, because the amount paid out to them in JSA is negligible, especially when offset against the literally billions pissed away by this government in dodgy contracts to relatives and cronies, PPE fiascos, IT project farces, vanity projects like HS2 or Garden Bridge, or when offset against the billions in corporate profits salted away offshore. I don't begrudge them their life on the dole; I see a small number of inevitable fraudsters as the price a civilised society pays to have an effective safety net in place for those who end up financially vulnerable, for whatever reason. I don't want to swap places with them, I don't want to spend my life working out how to 'beat the system', and I suspect very few people here want to either. To me it's more important that the vulnerable get what they need, preferably without having to navigate deliberately complex processes designed to be off-putting and belittling, than it is to persecute the few who work out how to game the system.

HMRC has 10 times more staff deployed to investigate so-called benefit fraud than they do tax evasion. Which of those two loopholes, if plugged, do you think actually has the potential to reclaim more money for the Treasury?

It's never about money. It's about bitter people who can't bear to think someone else is getting 'something for nothing', even though they themselves don't want to live the way the derided 'lazy benefit cheats' do.

People have really unrealistic views of how much money farmers make. From memory, pickers are paid about 50p per KG picked. The farm gate prices for a KG of strawberries is £1. Out of that 50p, farmers are paying huge fertiliser costs, fuel, seeds, pesticides, tax, fencing, pest control, asset depreciation, professional agronomy costs, land agent fees and permanent staffing costs amongst other things. Supermarkets are selling a kg of strawberries for about £5 per kg.

What are you missing? to be charitible? critical thinking skills.

I am however laughing at all the posters talking about the jobs being too far away. As though British fruit farms are closer to Romania than anywhere in England.

I'm sure you can engage some critical thinking skills to see what people mean by that. The migrant workers from outside the Eurozone who made up the majority of this workforce did not have to worry about how they paid their bills in their 'real life' while housed in the temporary accommodation on the farms. They didn't have to work out how they were going to get back to Romania to pick up their kids from school at the end of a shift, or cook and care for their disabled partner each evening, or travel there and back by unreliable and expensive public transport to the home they own or rent and would rather not have repossessed/be evicted from each day, or worry what earning twice the amount of their benefits for a very small number of weeks would do to those benefits that they need to live on the rest of the year. They are able to exempt themselves from the responsibilities of their 'real lives' for a while.

Of course geographically Romania is further away from the Herefordshire apple orchards than, say, Newcastle is. But socioeconomically, it makes much more sense for a recent Romanian graduate - young, physically fit - to come to Britain on a series of work visas for a few weeks for three or four years, knowing that at the end of it they will have enough money to buy a house back home and will have improved their foreign language skills, than it does for Brian in Newcastle who struggles to hold down a job because he was an undiagnosed dyslexic who left school with no qualifications and is now long-term unemployed, but who has his daughter nearby who keeps an eye on him and helps him out with some shopping when he's a bit short of cash, a bad back that doesn't quite qualify him for PIP and who will lose his social housing accommodation if he uproots himself for the sake of six weeks picking apples.

To use a topical pun, you're comparing apples with oranges.

But socioeconomically, it makes much more sense for a recent Romanian graduate - young, physically fit - to come to Britain on a series of work visas for a few weeks for three or four years, knowing that at the end of it they will have enough money to buy a house back home

No it doesn't which is why they are not coming here, visas & health insurance cost £1000's now plus around 1300 to support yourself.

I think your knowledge of the Romanian property market is rather outdated.