150 Rumanians arrive for fruit and veg picking.

[kenbro]

I agree my friend big problems with social distancing. 33,000 applicants means to me, if you are needed you get the job so don't apply unless you want it. Once applied for make them do the job by removing all benefits of any kind. We have an awful lot of fit benefit claimants, make them work, hard I know but my thoughts "If you are on benefits,fit, and offered work, 2 weeks after start,no more subsistence, work for it. Crash helmet on".

Some people on benefits have no intention of working, but, the must show willing or their money will stop.
So they go for job interviews and make it VERY clear to the interviewer that they are NOT suitable for the job.
Benefits continue.
Ken.

 

[Woodsmoke]

Second, is a known fact that most of the British do not want to do this kind of work , otherwise the Romanians wouldn't be here.

I'm not entirely sure that's the case, to be honest. I remember when I lived in Dundee years ago, berry-picking season was eagerly-anticipated by a lot of folk, a large proportion of them unemployed. Local fruit farms would lay on free transport, and whoever wanted a days work could just climb aboard the 'berry bus'. It was a great way for them to escape the town, and make a few extra pounds for themselves. Some may sneer at unemployed folk, but I remember a lot of them were damn hard grafters! But of course, our wise and just government decided that tax-free earnings, regardless how small, were the work of the devil and the much-loved tradition was destroyed. Now, of course, we're seeing the results of this idiotic policy.

Edit: and I'm sure these European workers are all paying their fair share of tax. I'm sure they are . . . .

 

[User00025]

Ah Pete walking behind the tractor with your apron made from a sack tied around your waist, bent in two as you walked "picking" the spuds into your apron, but when it was full you could stand up to empty it Was it really 60 years ago!

John

Just thinking similar John, nearly 65 yrs ago, typical day when I was at Grammar school.
Get up 5am cycle 1.5 miles, milk 40 cows(machine but intwo sheds, no tank, into churns). Get churns on stand, wash down cycle home. Wash, change, school uniform, breakfast. Wheel bike to village station, get on train with it, 3 stations, get off cycle 2 miles to school. Evening more or less in reverse, milk, have dinner do homework, bed.
So 2 milkings a day, 5 days a week at 2/-hour=£2.
Also singling swedes and mangold £7 acre.
When at Primary school from 8yrs old snare rabbits before school round snares 1/6 a couple from my Dad, he provided snares.
Wonder how many kids today could hack that for a few Bob.

 

[Warren79]

It's a mind set a huge amount of school leavers etc want to earn huge salaries, not minimum wage for at least 12 hours a day in all weather! I've been to several of these farms and it's not just veg picking it's grading packing shipping they run 24/7. And eastern Europeans seem to be the only ones willing to do it

 

[User00035]

From 13 onwards until leaving school I earned money from bale hauling. There's a lot of twenty somethings who couldn't handle that today. In fact, there were a few back then who couldn't stick a day of it without crying.
Can't see many teenagers coping with that now.

 

[User00014]

150 Rumanians have arrived in Britain for this years fruit and veg picking. This is only the tip of the iceberg as there are many thousands more needed throughout the country. There are some interesting articles available in the internet covering this topic, i.e. Part of one article reads ;
Up to 80,000 workers help farmers harvest their crops across the UK, the vast majority from Eastern Europe.

Only 10-15% of those workers are based in the UK and the rest fly in for the season.

Many farmers have tried hard over the years to recruit British workers but following a period of high employment have found it hard.

The Feed the Nation campaign is working to find farming jobs for the unemployed. So far it has had more than 33,000 applications of which 90% are British.

But it has only successfully placed 125 British people in jobs so far.

There are several things that interest me about this. For instance if so many Brits have applied (33,000 applicants of which 90% are British but it has only been able to successfully place 125 people in jobs so far) then the question that I would be interested in hearing the answer to is why only so few British applicants have been successfully placed?

Another thing that really does "concern" me is that when the fruit and veg picking season is in full swing and we have all these foriegn workers (And I know from first hand experience and agree that the vast majority of them are very hard working) how are their movements going to be controlled in order to continue to help slow the spread of CV19? I have seen it happen (And I will use Hereford as an example as I have first hand experience of fruit and veg harvesting in that area) that on most evenings after the work in the fields has finished Tescos in Hereford gets literally taken over by the immigrant fruit and veg workers getting their groceries. If that happens while we still have CV 19 lingering amongst us then will they all be made to practice "Social Distancing" (Which I believe will go on for a heck of a long time yet) or will the "employers" do something to arrange to keep the pickers within the boundaries of their property to help protect the locals from the spread of CV 19?

I don't have a problem with the immigrant "pickers" but have the government taken this into consideration?
What are your thought chaps?

Edit: While we are discussing this let's try not to be racist please.

I said this would happen a long time ago!

 

[slider]

What are they going to be picking in the middle of April?

Lots of fruit and veg ready in poly tunnels

 

[Warren79]

To be fair I'm a farm worker who's spent 20 odd working years avoiding veg picking! That and dairying

 

[User00014]

I agree my friend big problems with social distancing. 33,000 applicants means to me, if you are needed you get the job so don't apply unless you want it. Once applied for make them do the job by removing all benefits of any kind. We have an awful lot of fit benefit claimants, make them work, hard I know but my thoughts "If you are on benefits,fit, and offered work, 2 weeks after start,no more subsistence, work for it. Crash helmet on".

you’ve got more chance of taking the pope foxing than that happening.

 

[User00014]

But the good ol' Brits don't want to do this work. Our social care system rightly or wrongly allows people to sit at home, complain about the bloody foreigners coming over here stealing our jobs, and do absolutely jack about it because they are getting paid to do just that. The Romanians don't have that system. You don't work, you go hungry. The British public don't really give a monkeys where their food comes from on the whole providing they can afford to buy it. I'd like to see how one business would survive with only British workers, paid British workers rates and pay their overheads and still provide produce to the stores at the current prices.

100% the British are lazy and that’s a fact, very very few know how to get their hands dirty and graft.

 

[User00025]

you’ve got more chance of taking the pope foxing than that happening.

How did you know he was into digging then?☻

 

[foxdropper]

Mostly due to the last generation letting them get away with it .

 

[User00025]

Mostly due to the last generation letting them get away with it .

Hey up it's not my fault, all mine are grafters.

 

[foxhunter]

Some people on benefits have no intention of working, but, the must show willing or their money will stop.
So they go for job interviews and make it VERY clear to the interviewer that they are NOT suitable for the job.
Benefits continue.
Ken.

Exactly the system is at fault , to receive benefit JSA they should be forced to work , if they refuse they get no benefit....simple.

 

[kenbro]

Just thinking similar John, nearly 65 yrs ago, typical day when I was at Grammar school.
Get up 5am cycle 1.5 miles, milk 40 cows(machine but intwo sheds, no tank, into churns). Get churns on stand, wash down cycle home. Wash, change, school uniform, breakfast. Wheel bike to village station, get on train with it, 3 stations, get off cycle 2 miles to school. Evening more or less in reverse, milk, have dinner do homework, bed.
So 2 milkings a day, 5 days a week at 2/-hour=£2.
Also singling swedes and mangold £7 acre.
When at Primary school from 8yrs old snare rabbits before school round snares 1/6 a couple from my Dad, he provided snares.
Wonder how many kids today could hack that for a few Bob.

Wow,
When I was 13 in 1956 I worked for the Co-op Butcher.
3 mile (Approx) round delivering meat on a tradesman bike x 5 mornings before school.
Same after school each day, another similar sized round on the bike. (Single speed, free wheel).
Saturday, start at 07.30 and out and back many times until 13.00.
Pay...12 Shilling per week. Newspaper round paid around 7/6d per week at that time, so I thought I was well paid.
So, your £2 weekly sounds like a decent wage.
Ken.
PS. I did the spud picking before I was old enough (Pretty sure you had to be 13 before allowed to work such things as paper rounds, shop work etc) to start the meat job, and I can still taste the fruited tea cakes (Lashings of butter) and chilled milk the farmers wife brought to the fields at lunchtime.

 

[Frank Homes]

From 13 onwards until leaving school I earned money from bale hauling. There's a lot of twenty somethings who couldn't handle that today. In fact, there were a few back then who couldn't stick a day of it without crying.
Can't see many teenagers coping with that now.

I once did a day of that admittedly i was a lot older but it was ***king hard work if you weren't used to it.

 

[User00025]

I once did a day of that admittedly i was a lot older but it was ***king hard work if you weren't used to it.

We used to bale cart in the hols, Whitsun hay, Summer straw. Bloody hay bales got heavy as you got them on the fork and pitched them 4 bales high.
Before straw bales used to pitch sheaves, a lot easier, onto trailer then off onto Rick.

 

[kenbro]

Wow,
When I was 13 in 1956 I worked for the Co-op Butcher.
3 mile (Approx) round delivering meat on a tradesman bike x 5 mornings before school.
Same after school each day, another similar sized round on the bike. (Single speed, free wheel).
Saturday, start at 07.30 and out and back many times until 13.00.
Pay...12 Shilling per week. Newspaper round paid around 7/6d per week at that time, so I thought I was well paid.
So, your £2 weekly sounds like a decent wage.
Ken.
PS. I did the spud picking before I was old enough (Pretty sure you had to be 13 before allowed to work such things as paper rounds, shop work etc) to start the meat job, and I can still taste the fruited tea cakes (Lashings of butter) and chilled milk the farmers wife brought to the fields at lunchtime.

I must have looked like that kid in the Hovis ad. Our streets were the same too, a few had granite sets but most were York stone (I think) cobbles.
Ken.

 

[TURNBOLT]

It shouldnt me a matter of brits choosing not to do it plenty of people on the dole that need gainfull employment

Most Brit spongers are to idle to pick their nose never mind fruit and veg.They have been on the gravy train too long.

 

[hoodwink]

I wonder how many of the people on here that are complaining about lazy British would stand a single day doing what these Romanians do. It’s a tough job. I for one am grateful to them, Do you think the farmers want to spend time on labour with no skills that dont want to be there,