Are fishmongers, chefs, careworkers, poultry dressers & butchers low skill occupations ?

[lljkk]

According to Migration Watch they are low skill.
Do you agree?
I was listening to Radio4 just now, Tory person said "majority of migrants are low skill and shouldn't be"; Labour person said "We need to upskill our own people to do the jobs migrants are doing" (in which case they are not low skill, right? If UK people lack skills to do them).

I suspect MNers are wrong demographic to ask about this, like how many people do any of you know well in any of those occupations? How many people do you know who would refuse work if those occupations were the only option?

I would be terrible at those occupations... maybe I could be a fishmonger. I don't know how to do the other jobs for sure, or would find them too upsetting. They don't seem low skil to me.

My husbands a chef. A proper, qualified, award winning chef. He is very skilled. I’ve been a “chef” before. There’s a huge world of difference between a chef and a cook for example.

I think chef is definitely not a low skill occupation e.g if we are talking about someone who’s successfully done a level 3 Professional chef course at a college.
I suspect care worker could be either depends on what level of duties they do.
Can't comment on others.

Byy the way I also don’t like the lack of the logic - if it’s a low skill jobs we don’t need “ to upskill” British people to do them. We might need encourage them to return to workplace/ give opportunities for flexibility/ retrain but not upskill, it’s a wrong choice of word. Unfortunately logic and political statements never go together, it’s so annoying 😡

It's not the occupations so much as the pay. Some companies advertise abroad for cheaper staff which keeps wages low. They won't employ UK staff as they don't want to pay.

Some sectors pay below minimum wage and take advantage of people who don't know their rights. I know that some care workers are expected to do long shifts without sufficient breaks.

We have a reliance on imported labour in the UK which we need to break. Starmer was talking about it the other day, I'll be interested to see what his plans are to combat it.

Pretty sure Gordon Ramsay would have something to say about chefs being low skilled employees 😆

It's not low skilled if it requires skill, there will be varying levels of skill in any profession or job....some doctors are more skilled than others. I'm a heating engineer and I see examples of poor workmanship every day done by qualified professionals....so that tells me there needs to be a high degree of skill. We've all eaten at good restaurants and all had bad experiences too ...a lot of that is down to the skill behind the doors.

A skilled fishmonger will handle a product that's worth a months wages. So are you telling me that you would let an unskilled person gut and fillet a fish work 10,000 pounds...in Japan such people are very skilled.

So it's down to the individual isn't it

In the UK we look down on people who work with there hands. I find it amusing when I attend an emergency breakdown or leak and the person who's got a very good job seems to think I'm earning less than him. I have 60k van on his drive parked next to his 60k BMW and my feet for 3 hours work will be more than what he earns in a day. Only last week a guy commented saying "I bet you wish you worked harder at school". The funny thing is I got 8 olevels at grade B....and my job requires 5 yearly qualifications, I have to understand electrics, plumbing, boilers and I then I have to manage my business and do my returns....and which would explain why I earn well over 100k a year and he's on 60k being a worthless desk hippo who needs me to sort out his emergencies,

My point is everyone deserves a standard of living that doesn't mean they and there children live in poverty. Doesn't matter if your a cleaner, shelf stacker ...the job needs doing and they rightly deserve a wage suitable for the country you live in.

Behind every working person on poor wages is a family struggling behind closed doors. That to me is an unacceptable choice to made by people who label someone as unskilled.

How we solve this problem is a political choice, but when companies post record profits and then try and justify paying workers peanuts that to me is an unacceptable face of malthusian economics. It's about fairness and honesty and not the freedom to exploit.

They won't employ UK staff as they don't want to pay.

If people are paid more for fishi-poultry-butchering jobs then their pay rise will be paid by the peole who take consume the product. that means ordinary consumers. Or else demand will fall & the products will become premium/more luxury and there won't be so much demand for those professions, anyway. So that would mean less chicken consumed? Less fish or butchered meat? Given the environmental damage of animal protein & how much food is wasted maybe it's a good thing if the avg person eats a lot less. Win-Win all round?

Some sectors pay below minimum wage and take advantage of people who don't know their rights. I know that some care workers are expected to do long shifts without sufficient breaks.

The increased costs for care work would only be paid for by higher taxation. Is that what people voted for when they voted to have lower immigration?

We have a reliance on imported labour in the UK which we need to break. Starmer was talking about it the other day, I'll be interested to see what his plans are to combat it.

I can only see that the plans for lower immigation mean that all goods & services will become more expensive than they are, and taxation burden will rise. As someone who dislikes waste, I suppose I should be super happy because waste will fall (a bit).

The groupings are off.

It isn't by education as some require low level education. Others if fully qualified require degree level.

It isn't by salary as again disparity.

Generally the care roles traditionally women did for no money so their is significant wage issues given the level of responsibility.

when companies post record profits and then try and justify paying workers peanuts that to me is an unacceptable face of malthusian economics.

is there a plan to cap profit margins? I haven't heard of that. I only hear about reducing immigration, nothing about capping profit margins in the private sector.

i thought due to NI tax change Labour was in a pretty unfavourable place with business community. I doubt Labour will introduce plan to cap profit margins in private sector. Private profit won't reduce just because immigrants are kept out.

Chefs are definitely not low skill

I also don't think we encourage these jobs anymore from school age

Exh's new wife had a son in my ds's class at school. He failed all his GCSEs and retook maths and English to try and get the levels higher (don't know what he got in the end).

But in the holidays he went and worked as a roofer's mate and loved it - he made a load of money and was happy as larry.

Next time I saw exh, they had packed off the boy to some college to do 'business' which unsurprisingly he hated. Why they didn't encourage him to do a manual job or an apprenticeship I don't know - he was good at it and probably would have had a good career.

I once went out with a heating engineer who had a lovely work life balance. He didn't have kids and had no one to leave the business to and couldn't find a younger apprentice as no one wanted to do it!

There must be kids at school who would be better suited to these jobs but they just don't seem to be encouraged into them!

I'm flummoxed tbh about this debate. No one wants low skilled immigrants because 'low quality'. We all want high skilled ones, apparently, who won't eat up our benefits. Yet the gaps in the jobs market are in areas traditionally described as low skilled i.e. Care, hospitality and agriculture. I've worked in all these fields at one time or another. My wc family do many of these sorts of jobs. The problem is that there is no such thing as low skilled. Even work in a field requires training, not all people are up to the physical side or have the mental resilience. Seeing a skilled care giver is beautiful to behold. A cook works hard in uncomfortable spaces to deliver safe, tasty food under pressure. What 'low skilled' work actually means imo is undesirable work. Work that is physically or mentally tough, undervalued, often but not exclusively in the female field. Pay isn't the key problem. Some (not all) of these sectors offer quite good pay. It's the conditions that are punishing: night work, long shifts, messy, smelly work, hot or very cold environmental conditions, work on Sundays, stretches of time away from home. Today's UK workforce want to sit in front of a clean computer, wear a suit and clock off Friday afternoon.

No idea what a poutry dresser does but the others are all skilled trades which traditionally were learned alongside work and a more experienced peer. They all have qualifications available to reflect the study aspects as well.

I suspect the commenters were confusing "low skill" with "low paid".