To think Brexit has robbed us of so much?

[elzober]

A friend of mine from America recently obtained citizenship of an EU country due to family links. She's now ready to look for a job and open to anything as she doesn't have a degree but worked in the family agricultural business back home. She's fluent in English.

A few years ago I would have been able to invite her to stay with me here in the UK, help her get established and set her up to apply for one of the many jobs over here. But now I can't do any of that.

The ridiculous part is I know local businesses that are really struggling to recruit, can't find people locally and have struggled with the lack of EU workers since Brexit. Particularly in hospitality, agriculture and travel.

Why did we close the door to people who filled these vacancies and contributed to society and paid taxes?

She would have been a decent tax payer, nice member of the community but she's not allowed in.

She's probably going to Ireland now as apparently there's lots more opportunities there since we became an isolated island.

I will never forgive the Conservatives for this shambles. Don't get me started on the fact that a British passport is now worthless and we've lost our right to live in 27 countries. Madness.

True...and in the context of the food industry raising wages for those working in the fields is more upwards pressure on food prices in the supermarket...

I suspect in reality when it comes to the crunch at the checkout many people will continue to happily turn a blind eye to agricultural sector wages and country of origin of many of those working in the agriculture industry.

UK farming PLC will continue to import cheapish labour TFN. I certainly can't see "We want our potato/blackcurrent/cabbage/etc picking jobs back " being a popular rallying cry.

Your friend coming here or not us of no great significance to the country as a whole.

Except there are hundreds of thousands missing friends not coming here, and it IS of great significance to the country.

It's not just ood. Manufacturing, warehouses so basically all the goods etc.
It will be interesting to watch.
Though I don't think some of the wages were ever affected by EU cheap labour tbh. Like none of the electricians I ever had costed less than any of the lawyers 😂 I still sometimes look at sparky courses and wonder if I should.

I think agriculture is bit different kettle of fish overall and I wonder if rising wages will make modern slavery even more... "Popular". From what I understand the numbers were rising last few years. Might be bit more difficult now EE people need paperwork, not just coming, but where there is a will there is a way unfortunately.

Jesus Christ. Obviously the economic contribution of a person to society is calculated by taking their tax contribution and subtracting the costs they exact on services.

But some wealthy people pay far less in tax than a lot of lower paid people by the time you've worked your way through their (legal) financial arrangements. Not by accident either.

Wages are a shit show in this country and yes I fully blame the cheap Labour bought in from the EU over the past 20 years. Maybe if it hadn't been allowed to happen and exploited by employers I might actually be on a more livable wage now. Now employers are moaning they can't recruit.. I wonder why!

This and the tale of the depression of welders' wages pp posted, are more complicated than that, though. Because not only was there an increase in the number of people who came over who were prepared to work for less (for reasons we all know) it coincided with a decline (sharply) of trade union membership.

If there had been stronger unions who worked on behalf of all workers in their industry, it might have been possible to have higher wages for all, and maybe create other types of contracts so you could have x number based in a location and y number of a "flying squad" to do the ad hoc short-notice work. As an example.

As for "yeah, you can still work where you like". Well, yes you can. But not in the same way as before. When i first worked in Germany even EU nationals were treated as "foreign" workers, sort of 2nd class compared to Germans, but outside of EU workers were 3rd class in terms of hoops to jump through. Then in the 90s (?) it all changed and EU workers were all set on the same footing, rights-wise, as national ones. That led to even more movement and employers got a good deal.
Now employers have to prove that they can't employ an EU national, if they want to employ someone from a 3rd country, and that isn't easy. (it does, of course give that person good bargaining power in terms of T&C if they really are that unique)

Fruit picking & harvesting (all seasonal work) has traditionally been done by young people. It used to be students and families (plenty of stories about families having a summer "holiday" from London by hop-picking in Kent, even the fairly young children), the EU only made that pool bigger. Now the pool is smaller and nobody wants the jobs.

Economics 101: if something is scarce the price goes up. The scarcity here is workers, so why are wages still depressed? That is the $64 million question.

I wonder if the "you can still work in the EU, it's just requires you to fill in a bit more paperwork"-crowd have actually tried it.

Sure, for the small number of people who are engineers, academics, programmers, it's not too difficult to get a job offer and subsequent visa. For the large number of workers who are admin assistants, call center workers, baristas, there's no chance.

Even for, say, a nurse it's now incredibly difficult. Previously they could have moved here, worked as a care assistant for a bit while learning the language and having their qualifications converted and after a few years work as a nurse again. Now? No chance. A hospital isn't going to sponsor a visa for a nurse who doesn't speak the language and unqualified jobs are not eligible for a visa.

EU migration rules allowed people to move and work their way up in their new country. Without it migration is largely the preserve of those who are already 'up'.

@DitzyBluebells I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I'm job hunting and local salaries where I am are shockingly low. I was earning more 15 years ago.

Any slightly competent British National can still live and work in Europe if they want to - if you can’t manage a bit of visa paperwork then you were not going to manage the process of relocating anyway
That's just not true. EU employers give precedence to EU workers. That's the point. We have deliberately disadvantaged our own workers. No wonder so many people think we are crazy! It is crazy.

It hasn't robbed me of anything

YANBU 😢

I've lived in many countries abroad - None in the EU - broaden your horizons folks

🥱 🥱 Another Brexit bashing thread. Get over it, more people wanted to leave than stay, doesn’t that tell you something?

Well said @DitzyBluebells . I actually voted remain and agree with the basic premise of the op, while thinking that the particular example was poor. It’s clear that issues caused by immigration from the EU will continue with increased immigration from without, and the main problem is the attitude of the rich in the west (the US too) wanting to turn us all into 3rd world countries or empires with a large poor serf population with few choices.

However I am tired of the born middle classes ignoring what working class people have been telling them about their lived reality for 30 years. I am also tired of well-off people quoting well known internet facts without stopping to consider what they mean.

The oft quoted fact that EU immigrants are net contributors to the economy, along with facts and figures about how amazing they are because they put money in and take nothing out, IS NOT, in any way whatsoever, an oppositional argument to the lived experience of depressed wages. In fact it’s part and parcel of the same issue.

The very reason the maths works in their favour is because they don’t live here. They were never kids here, requiring inconveniently costly education, healthcare and training. They will not, or are not yet, old here, requiring yet more inconvenient costly healthcare and pensions. They come as well-off people from their own countries, qualified as well-off people always are around the globe by virtue of being well-off, take the wages given here and live cheap, then go back and use the disparity in living costs to their advantage. They don’t complain as much in the mean time because they do not, in the final analysis, have to stay. They have many many more options via international connections than your standard descendant of poor British mill, factory, mines and domestic servant ancestors.

Please remember in your typical middle class thoughtless ideas for unattainable solutions how little some people have always had in Britain and how much has changed in so little time. Many people here can’t even afford a trip into the next town, let alone down to London where jobs and money have increasingly concentrated. Retraining is not an option now for those with no money.

It's harder for people from the EU to come here, and harder for people from here to go to the EU. Not impossible, not even difficult, just they have to put a tiny bit more effort in. The EU isn't the world, it's no more complicated to go to the EU now than it was to go to America or Australian before. Easier in fact, because it's nearer.

Remainers still miss a key point as to why people voted leave. Many leave-ers didn't travel to or work in the EU to begin with. Many parts of the UK have been transformed by an influx of mostly eastern Europeans over the last couple of decades. Many people saw Europeans benefitting from unrestricted movement by coming here, whilst free movement was of no real benefit to themselves.

Yes, there are struggles to get low-skilled, low-paid workers now. Good. It will force the issue, either the employer will have to offer proper wages to British people or accept that the job isn't that important. We need a higher wage mentality and to accept that paying someone a pittance for their daily grind is not acceptable.

So far, Brexit hasn't robbed me of anything. I've been able to do everything I was able to before, plus I have the comfort of knowledge that those more fortunate than me are slightly more inconvenienced.

For me personally (EU citizen, been in the UK my entire adult life) it's really limited my personal oppertunities and made my life a lot more difficult. Both in the UK and in terms of being other places.

It will definitely have a negative impact on the UK. Anyone who knew anything about economics or politics or world affairs was clear about that. This was a decision driven by feelings. We will all have to live with the impact. (which brexiteers will of course deny and blame on covid etc).

"I have the comfort of knowledge that those more fortunate than me are slightly more inconvenienced."

What a spiteful attitude to have to life.

Yup we are now duel citizenship so DS can freely work and travel when he is older, was a lot of paperwork to maintain something we used to have anyway.

I can't find any benefits of BREXIT, the only people I know who support it are the rough working class who don't understand diversity :(! Low paid work like fruit picking is never going to support a family, it something in places like Australia that is done on a working holiday visa for that reason!

I would love to see a political party campaign on the basis that they will look to rejoin the EU and write into the constitution that we can't leave unless >50% of the population vote for it. Would love to to see voting become an online 30 second job to encourage more people to participate.

It's our children and young people I feel so cross about. Removing an easy opportunity to study and work abroad. Our next door neighbour's son is waiting on his Irish passport to allow him to continue to do this. My children have no such Irish/ EU connections 😞

An overwhelmingly it was older people who voted for this. Fuck over the young yet again why don't you. Makes me so mad (I know not all older people but statistically.)

My only hope is that in 10 years they'll be another referendum. But probably more like 20 or 30.

And yet some politician (I forget who) has recently suggested, haven't they, that students take these seasonal jobs now we have no one from the EU to do them.
Guess we're happy for some British people to take jobs with back-breaking, long hours, appalling pay and overcrowded living conditions.

It's disadvantaged everyone.

I used to work at Airbus and still have friends there. People simply aren't moving across sites any more. Not in the numbers they were.

That's a big problem for a slowly disintegrating UK industry. Airbus is already stripping the UK of work just as they threatened before the referendum. It's impossible to relocate a multi billion pound industry immediately but over the next 10-20 years it'll be possible to leave the UK for good.

I couldn't clap more slowly 🙄

Just to be clear, are you claiming there are/were more Brits working in Europe then other EU nationals working in the UK. I won't believe that, unless you can show me the data. I would imagine 80% of "migrants from the UK" are retired in the EU, rather than working there.

It tells me that a lot of people were disenfranchised and unhappy with the state of affairs. And that convincing politicians like Nigel Farage convinced them it was the doing of the EU.

I won't believe that, unless you can show me the data.

And when you're shown the data you'll argue over the font, or the spelling. If it's official government figures you'll claim they aren't right. If it's figures from a trade body you'll say they aren't official. Rinse and repeat. Brexit is a cult, and everything in the world has to be distorted into it's (non-)world view.

The isn't a single objective metric to measure Brexit by*. There is more oversight over the manufacture of the smallest screw in my motor car than the entire Brexit project.

*That is my invitation for you to provide some data 😀

Employers are supposed to pay as little as possible for labour, it's their job to make as much profit as possible. In a competitive market for their output a business will struggle to make good profits even if they do this. In general any hiring manager who is not the sole owner of the business who pays more than can be justified as being in the best interest of the business should be sacked for being incompetent or corrupt.

The minimum wage is not an arbitrary number that the government sets to any level it feels like, it is something that is carefully calibrated so that it's level does not cause unemployment. (Minimum wages, like all price controls, generally do more harm than good, but as far as I can see, the UK minimum wage has been so carefully maintained that it's not caused much of a problem, since its recent creation by the Blair government.)

That's a big problem for a slowly disintegrating UK industry

There are lots of people saying that now employers don’t have access to cheap (EU) labour, wages will rise magically and everyone will be handsomely paid for low skilled work.

That’s going to mean businesses will have to increase prices accordingly. Strawberries will have to cost £6 a punnet as the workforce demands £20 an hour. Net result is no one buys strawberries anymore and the farm reverts to wasteland. We’re already seeing fruit and veg rotting in the fields.

Ditto your local pub, coffee shop or care home- everyone wants £20 an hour and the wage bill means the business fails, because the customer can’t or won’t pay the resulting higher end cost.

It’s now nigh on impossible to get a builder or many other trades. Demand is high and those able to do the work are quoting much higher amounts and have year long waiting lists. Great for them, but it will surely mean that many people can’t afford that work to be done anymore and the end result is no one does the work.

I simply see a lot of businesses failing, and where there was once something, there will be nothing. It’s all a bit magic money tree this “slave labour” argument. The end result will be economic stagnation and ultimately failure, with a healthy dose of inflation on the way.