Why Are The Lazy English Not Picking Our Fruits And Vegetables?

Mojisola

Masomnia wrote: »

Both cases could easily be a breach of national minimum wage regulations.

How's that?

Masomnia

Mojisola wrote: »

How's that?

By including holiday pay. Someone who is 21 or over would need to be paid more than £7.83 per hour including holiday pay.

£8.14 wouldn't be enough either for someone 21 and above, if that includes holiday pay which it probably does.

stator

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

How much more are you willing to pay for your fruit and veg?

I already do. Lovely fresh fruit from the bahamas! Who needs manky old scottish fruit. Not exactly gonna be sun ripened up there, is it!

I heard in scotland they have grass farms, growing grass indoors with 1000W UV lightbulbs, but it's not weed their growing like you might think, it's just normal grass to plant on their lawns, pretend they're living in a sunny part of the world

Herzlos

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

One of the ideas is to allow workers in to pick the fruit on a temporary basis, which would mean that anyone would be able to come here and pick it, not just eu citizens. It would make a good break for anyone on a gap year, they could travel around the UK picking fruit on various farms and actually learn English, which is more than a lot of the eu citizens seem to these days.

Why would a bus full of, say, Cambodians be any more likely to bother learning English than Euroopeans? Once their visa expires they'll either run off or be shipped back home.

Pennywise

kabayiri wrote: »

Basic food is actually very cheap.

It's cleaned/processed food which pushes up the shopping bill.

Despite this, we in the UK spend vast amounts on ready meals and pre-prepared food.

"baisc" foods are used in ready meals, so prices would rise across the board, not just on raw/fresh goods.

kabayiri

Pennywise wrote: »

"baisc" foods are used in ready meals, so prices would rise across the board, not just on raw/fresh goods.

There are still options to control your shopping bill.

I don't believe farm workers are net tax payers. It's hard work and long term health problems like back issues are not uncommon.

It comes down to who should subsidise these jobs; the tax payer or the consumer.

Herzlos

I'd rather the government subsidized healthy food for all, rather than subsidizing insufficient wages.

So farmers should be paying a legal wage.
But that doesn't address the question; why aren't locals doing this work for minimum wage?


Just the benefits system screwing them for doing seasonal work?
Cultural shifts where migrants did the lower skilled jobs and pushed locals up the stack?
Todays kids wanting to become an overnight celebrity and feel that dirty work is beyond them?
The potential workers not living anywhere near the farms? Since there's (presumably) more unemployed youth in cities, where there tends not to be farms.
High cost of personal transport making farm work unattainable? If people are learning to drive later due to the cost, there are less who can drive to a farm on their own. Would you buy a car and pay £2k+ a year in insurance just to get to a seasonal minimum wage job*?




*I probably would, because I'd rather be working. But I'm also pretty rural so can walk to the nearest few farms or potentially get a lift from someone else.

lisyloo

All of the above +


BOMAD
50% of population going to uni


*you might be talking from the privileged position of having £2k up front. Costs increase if you have to borrow.

Herzlos

It should be an ideal job for uni students - there's a (deliberate) overlap between school/uni holidays and when farm labour is required.

lisyloo

Herzlos wrote: »

It should be an ideal job for uni students - there's a (deliberate) overlap between school/uni holidays and when farm labour is required.

But if you're taking on a £10K, £20K or £50K debt or whatever it is these days, then is there much point?


I grew up in a different era and I started working at 13 (paper rounds, picking up skittles) and had a saturday job at 15 (shoe shop) and in school holidays, but we didn't have credit back then and there was some point to the reward I was getting. It paid for things I wanted to buy in the days (like clothes, vinyl, makeup) when there was no credit.



I can sympathise with someone taking on a big debt feeling it's a drop in the ocean.

I was in Grenada on a scuba diving holiday and on one of the days we went out with some students from the US who were studying to be doctors. The debts they were taking on were huge, so why not spend a little time scuba diving rather than fruit picking?



So a different mindset caused by the availability of credit?


As someone at the larger end of the snowball (due to age) my pensions and home are earning more than me, so I can see how important it is to start that snowball. I didn't have this explained to me when I was young and I'm pretty sure most peple don't get just how much difference it makes.

My parent friends tell me that students have it drilled into them that their student loans are a piece of paper and a future tax and they shouldn't think of it as debt.