Wonderful things happening after the referendum and A50

[McAz]

...these jobs are in rural areas so how are unemployed people supposed to get there? a jobless teen in Burnley is hardly able to afford the travel/living expenses required to work on a fruit farm in Kent are they?

That's a good point. I live in a farming area where unemployment is virtually unheard of (or acceptably intentional) so didn't factor that in.

[wutang]

...these jobs are in rural areas so how are unemployed people supposed to get there? a jobless teen in Burnley is hardly able to afford the travel/living expenses required to work on a fruit farm in Kent are they?

That's a good point. I live in a farming area where unemployment is virtually unheard of (or acceptably intentional) so didn't factor that in.

Highest rates of unemployment is in places like the North West, West Midlands, North East... how are they to do the jobs in places like Lincolnshire or Kent?

[wutang]

This from 2000....

The gangmasters often operate with smugglers, who charge a fee to bring labourers to Britain and then force them to work to pay off their debts. Many workers come to Britain from throughout Eastern Europe in response to newspaper advertisements, the programme says.

For a fee, which can be in excess of £1,000, the adverts promise transport to Britain and high-paid work. But once they enter the country - many hidden in lorries - they are offered only cheap, casual labour on farms. An undercover reporter who posed as an illegal immigrant, was paid £5.80 for a day's work on a farm.

I doubt things have changed radically since then.

Maybe £20 a day + accomodation (a clapped out caravan)

[Si_Crewe]

Highest rates of unemployment is in places like the North West, West Midlands, North East... how are they to do the jobs in places like Lincolnshire or Kent?

Given that the people doing these jobs have traveled half way across a fucking continent to do them, that excuse, alone, doesn't wash.

I wonder if there'd be any mileage in setting up some kind of charity which offers to get people together and bus them around the country to take these jobs?
Would the unemployed people in cities be interested in grouping together and then travelling across the country to spend a couple of months earning a bit of cash?
Honestly, I dunno.

[wutang]

Highest rates of unemployment is in places like the North West, West Midlands, North East... how are they to do the jobs in places like Lincolnshire or Kent?

Given that the people doing these jobs have traveled half way across a fucking continent to do them, that excuse, alone, doesn't wash.

I wonder if there'd be any mileage in setting up some kind of charity which offers to get people together and bus them around the country to take these jobs?
Would the unemployed people in cities be interested in grouping together and then travelling across the country to spend a couple of months earning a bit of cash?
Honestly, I dunno.

See previous posts:

Gangmaster recuit by offering the cost of travel which means the workers are then in debt to them (handy for fucking them over), accommodation is usually some substandard piece of shit on site (the cost of which also has to be worked off). Hence these poor fucks are earning a lot less than minimum wage and trapped in near slave-like situations

So unless you want the government to pay for a travel and accomodation program the only option is massively increase wages so workers can afford these things.

[Si_Crewe]

See previous posts:

Gangmaster recuit by offering the cost of travel which means the workers are then in debt to them (handy for fucking them over), accommodation is usually some substandard piece of shit on site (which also has to be worked off).

So unless you want the government to pay for a travel and accomodation program the only option is massively increase wages so workers can afford these things.

I'm not sure what your point is.

We currently find ourselves in a situation where, according to you, immigrant labour is being exploited and where British people cannot possibly compete on an even footing and yet you're also critical of the economic impact Brexit is likely to have on the country as a result of businesses losing their supply of cheap labour.

As I've said before, Brexit wasn't just a sudden, impulsive, decision.
If both the EU and successive UK governments had paid attention to this stuff over the last 20 years, and actually DONE things to ensure a level playing field rather than just paying lip-service to the idea, the EU might have been seen as a credible organisation worthy of remaining part of.

You've spent the last 20 years warming yourself with a fire you built on your living room floor and now you're moaning because your house has burned down.

[wutang]

This from 2000....

The gangmasters often operate with smugglers, who charge a fee to bring labourers to Britain and then force them to work to pay off their debts. Many workers come to Britain from throughout Eastern Europe in response to newspaper advertisements, the programme says.

For a fee, which can be in excess of £1,000, the adverts promise transport to Britain and high-paid work. But once they enter the country - many hidden in lorries - they are offered only cheap, casual labour on farms. An undercover reporter who posed as an illegal immigrant, was paid £5.80 for a day's work on a farm.

I doubt things have changed radically since then.

Maybe £20 a day + accomodation (a clapped out caravan)

From 2009

Revealed: Scandal of Britain's fruit-farm workers

Foreign fruit pickers are taking home as little as £45 a week at a company which provides some of Britain's largest supermarkets with thousands of tonnes of fruit, an investigation by The Independent has found.

S&A Produce, which supplies both Tesco and Sainsbury's, employs thousands of eastern Europeans who are given a specific work visa allowing them to work for the company. They are attracted by the prospect of earning up to £200 a week by picking fruit on its farms in Herefordshire and Kent.

The workers are officially paid the minimum wage of £5.74, a comparatively high sum for foreign nationals who often have an average annual income of less than £3,000 in their own countries. But employee pay slips obtained by The Independent show that the real hourly rate for the company's fruit pickers often amounts to less than half the minimum wage once a series of obligatory charges has been deducted.

One pay slip handed to The Independent by a Bulgarian employee who still picks strawberries on a farm in Brierley near Leominster, Herefordshire, showed that his net pay one week once the charges were removed was £45.12 for 19 hours of work – an equivalent of being paid just £2.37 an hour. Another employee at the same farm was paid £58 for 22 hours' work, the equivalent of just £2.61 per hour. The most substantial pay slip seen by The Independent, which was earned by a fruit picker last month, provided £70 for 16 hours' work, or £4.43 per hour.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 40207.html

[wutang]

We currently find ourselves in a situation where, according to you, immigrant labour is being exploited and where British people cannot possibly compete on an even footing and yet you're also critical of the economic impact Brexit is likely to have on the country as a result of businesses losing their supply of cheap labour.

Nope. My position is always workers rights, pay and conditions... that includes ALL workers regardless of where they are from.

Instead of insisting migrant workers are stopped from taking these jobs so British workers can be exploited instead we need to demand a massive crackdown on the types of pay and working conditions being offered in these places regardless of who works there.

[McAz]

We currently find ourselves in a situation where, according to you, immigrant labour is being exploited and where British people cannot possibly compete on an even footing and yet you're also critical of the economic impact Brexit is likely to have on the country as a result of businesses losing their supply of cheap labour.

Nope. My position is always workers rights, pay and conditions... that includes ALL workers regardless of where they are from.

Instead of insisting migrant workers are stopped from taking these jobs so British workers can be exploited instead we need to demand a massive crackdown on the types of pay and working conditions being offered in these places regardless of who works there.

We do indeed - but then who would the right-wing toadies have to look down on?

[wutang]

We currently find ourselves in a situation where, according to you, immigrant labour is being exploited and where British people cannot possibly compete on an even footing and yet you're also critical of the economic impact Brexit is likely to have on the country as a result of businesses losing their supply of cheap labour.

Nope. My position is always workers rights, pay and conditions... that includes ALL workers regardless of where they are from.

Instead of insisting migrant workers are stopped from taking these jobs so British workers can be exploited instead we need to demand a massive crackdown on the types of pay and working conditions being offered in these places regardless of who works there.

We do indeed - but then who would the right-wing toadies have to look down on?

Also... how will these farms survive. Would require a massive amount of government subsidies - so much for leaving the EU saving us money.

[McAz]

We currently find ourselves in a situation where, according to you, immigrant labour is being exploited and where British people cannot possibly compete on an even footing and yet you're also critical of the economic impact Brexit is likely to have on the country as a result of businesses losing their supply of cheap labour.

Nope. My position is always workers rights, pay and conditions... that includes ALL workers regardless of where they are from.

Instead of insisting migrant workers are stopped from taking these jobs so British workers can be exploited instead we need to demand a massive crackdown on the types of pay and working conditions being offered in these places regardless of who works there.

We do indeed - but then who would the right-wing toadies have to look down on?

Also... how will these farms survive. Would require a massive amount of government subsidies - so much for leaving the EU saving us money.

Perhaps, through the EU, agricultural workers' pay and conditions could be brought up to a common standard while maintaining a common market for farm produce?

(Bugger, there's a flaw there somewhere...)

[Si_Crewe]

Nope. My position is always workers rights, pay and conditions... that includes ALL workers regardless of where they are from.

Instead of insisting migrant workers are stopped from taking these jobs so British workers can be exploited instead we need to demand a massive crackdown on the types of pay and working conditions being offered in these places regardless of who works there.

You seem to have completely ignored the 2nd paragraph of the post which you quoted.

Hell, you've just posted up reports from 2000 and 2009 which demonstrate that people HAVE been demanding this stuff for 20-odd years, and nothing's been done abut it.

Personally, I'm more interested in the wellbeing of UK citizens than people from other countries but, regardless of that, if this stuff was dealt with then it'd be possible for UK citizens and immigrants to compete for jobs on an even footing and, whoever got them, they'd get paid a living wage.

It wasn't dealt with by the EU or by UK governments and that's one of the reasons why the majority of voters lost faith in the EU.

[McAz]

Personally, I'm more interested in the wellbeing of UK citizens than people from other countries but, regardless of that, if this stuff was dealt with then it'd be possible for UK citizens and immigrants to compete for jobs on an even footing and, whoever got them, they'd get paid a living wage.

How might we do that without the EU?

[Si_Crewe]

Personally, I'm more interested in the wellbeing of UK citizens than people from other countries but, regardless of that, if this stuff was dealt with then it'd be possible for UK citizens and immigrants to compete for jobs on an even footing and, whoever got them, they'd get paid a living wage.

How might we do that without the EU?

Is the NMW being abolished as a result of Brexit?

[McAz]

Personally, I'm more interested in the wellbeing of UK citizens than people from other countries but, regardless of that, if this stuff was dealt with then it'd be possible for UK citizens and immigrants to compete for jobs on an even footing and, whoever got them, they'd get paid a living wage.

How might we do that without the EU?

Is the NMW being abolished as a result of Brexit?

How does that help prevent cheap migrant labour from Eastern Europe - and who will buy our produce at greatly inflated prices due to the increased labour costs?