150 Rumanians arrive for fruit and veg picking.

[FrenchieBoy]

This gives a bit more insight into the situation..

British workers reject fruit-picking jobs as Romanians flown in

Contract length, farm location and caring duties cited as reasons for turning down work

www.theguardian.com

That article does explain quite a lot, especially the part about the length of contracts and having to live away for so long which just isn't practical for many who did offer to take up the work. Well found and well done for posting it as it does answer a lot of questions!

 

[Rusty Gate]

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 don't believe in doing nothing for your dole.
My boss won't let me so if there's nothing done, no dole.
Should have job card/time sheets stamped by the council for local litter pick, graffiti removal or cleaning up parks or estates even, then collect your dole. If that seems like poor value for money get a propper job.
All dole should be good & energy vouchers, not cash yo buy cigs & alcohol, those are luxury'a & no use to your children

 

[Shootgun]

At least someone is recognizing the contribution the Romanians made to the UK economy...

HRH Prince of Wales didn't forgot that today, millions of Romanians (and not only) across the world are celebrating the Orthodox Easter.

 

[Steve88]

This gives a bit more insight into the situation..

British workers reject fruit-picking jobs as Romanians flown in

Contract length, farm location and caring duties cited as reasons for turning down work

www.theguardian.com

Thanks for the post MW73
You can instantly dismiss anything that has been written by theguardian utter tosh . It will be anti-British 100% of the time .
My thoughts are ,there is probably some sort of con, back hand deal with accommodation with the imported workers like there is in the trucking and haulage industry .Whether this will be admitted by thoughts that know ,we shall see?
Be well.

 

[bluesako]

I don't believe in doing nothing for your dole.
My boss won't let me so if there's nothing done, no dole.
Should have job card/time sheets stamped by the council for local litter pick, graffiti removal or cleaning up parks or estates even, then collect your dole. If that seems like poor value for money get a propper job.
All dole should be good & energy vouchers, not cash yo buy cigs & alcohol, those are luxury'a & no use to your children

couldnt have said it better rusty gate

 

[countrryboy]

Thanks for the post MW73
You can instantly dismiss anything that has been written by theguardian utter tosh . It will be anti-British 100% of the time .
My thoughts are ,there is probably some sort of con, back hand deal with accommodation with the imported workers like there is in the trucking and haulage industry .Whether this will be admitted by thoughts that know ,we shall see?
Be well.

Aye probably will be some back handers involved with the agencies.

Really don't know why they need contracts anyway, in Oz u just rocked up at the farm althou better to phone ahead to make sure not awasted journey.

The agencies will be wanting to make it as complicated as possible as foreign workers will be easier to control as no motors and need the dogs.

 

[Rusty Gate]

couldnt have said it better rusty gate

Why is it if you asked every working guy they'd agree yet our House Of Morons never put simple measures like this in place.
The sooner they get some back bone sorting that & only using foreign workers when unemployment falls to a quarter then maybe Britain can become Great again

 

[bogtrotter]

Its not just fruit picking for a good few years many Scottish estates have been employing Grouse beaters from
Romania, Poland, Hungary,Czechoslovakia and so on why because a great many of our own won't do it for the
money paid there are a few of course but not many.
Not only are these Continental's prepared to do the work they do it willingly
with a smile and are polite.
One estate that I go to they are paid sixty pounds a day plus there accommodation and meals the estate employs
a cook to feed them and the accommodation is good.
Normally five days a week on the grouse sometimes they can get additional work at weekends but that is optional.
Not bad in my book but they just can't get enough reliable beaters of our own.









to

 

[countrryboy]

Aye seen me going up north to be a bothy beater too. Good craic
The bunkhouse on Ralia could be a wild place at times and a long stagger back from Newtonmore.

 

[Scotty99]

Where I live on the Worcestershire and Herefordshire border we have have for many years seen many Eastern European fruit pickers coming over in the summer months. They are in the main very cheerful and friendly folks, who work extremely hard doing highly repetitive, back breaking work, probably for very little pay while staying in remote static caravans at the back of the farm. I don't think the queue for these jobs from the British "welfare worker" has been very long in the past. Maybe things will changes post Covid-19.

 

[TomDeer]

If I was a farmer given a choice between a local unknown or my usual foreign worker, I know which one I would be going for. It would be the one I knew would put the work in, do it properly, not whinge about it and not call in sick. If that meant I was paying to fly them in, I would just pay up.

Many moons ago when a student I used to work on a farm and also pick soft fruit so have some idea of the hard graft that's required. TBH, I enjoyed the farm work far more than what I do now

 

[TomT3]

As stated and as I say, these people aren’t going to go to work for £60 a day A. If they have a mortgage and need to live obviously it isn’t no where near enough. B. If they are on the rock and roll they will be raking it in. So why would they work when they can sit on their lazy fat arses and get paid by all of the tax payers to do so???

I get paid circa 3k as an electrical contractor manager per month which isn’t bad money although nothing compared to a doctor etc It is ample for me to support my wife (who is a housewife) 3 girls under 4 and a mortgage and have a comfortable life AT THE MINUTE we don’t live beyond our means I have a car loan but we are comfortable . I need a bigger house as I only have a 3 bed semi I’m only 33 so have a while yet hopefully.
I read an article the other day about a family panicking going on universal credit. The bloke earns £1600 quid a month or something and the universal credit gives them an extra £1500 a month and they said they was struggling WTF!!! That’s the problem with this country to many living off the state. At least this bloke was working some don’t work and get just as much it’s disgusting. That’s the reason British people don’t want to work for nothing the simple answer is they don’t have to.

 

[hoodwink]

Yep. Been there too. Hay bales from meadow land also seemed particularly heavy. Used to pee me off that I, in my mid teens, worked as hard or harder than the men but got paid much less. We weren't allowed to rope the loads either because a properly stacked load doesn't need a rope!

I had that first job on a farm sent with tractor and trailer to pick up bales no rope! The farmer came down to the field to see where i had got too, just as i was driving back he took over while i sat on the bales he drove like a mad man, the bales fell off, he then decided to teach me how to stack bales, i learnt three things from him the second was a Snickle, the third was dont put up with working with fxxxxxrs like that.

 

[hunta]

I think the point is being missed .how much are the flights costing ? what are the imported workers being paid ? compared to native brits doing the same thing .And if there are paid the same how are they offsetting the cost of flights? It doze not add up to me, This has little to do with picking fruit .

It has everything to do with picking/packing fruit and veg. Why else would the flights have been arranged? Also these workers are used to making their own way to the UK so they will be contributing to the cost of the flights. The 150 Romanians will be working in the UK for up to 6 months so it's a cost effective way of getting the crops picked. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about!

 

[hunta]

Reading most posts it would appear something has been overlooked... don’t forget foreign labour is willing to work for a lot less than their British counterparts.

Don’t get me wrong when I was still on the the tools I’ve worked a lot in lazy benefit scroungers houses and don’t deny British can be lazy especially today’s generation (the one after mine).
One of the big issues is the employer getting away with paying crap money. A British worker can’t live on £30 a day-a group of Eastern European’s sharing a house or staying in a caravan for months can..,especially if it is all cash

Read my post #88. Regardless of nationality workers doing the same job will be paid the same rate of pay. Most picking jobs are piece work but all workers have to earn at least the minimum/living wage. Many will earn more than this by picking more than the minimum requirement. If they can't achieve the min wage they will be offered another job or sent back to the agency or dismissed. The sort of businesses that are employing these workers don't pay cash. Everyone will be P.A.Y.E.

 

[TomT3]

Read my post #88. Regardless of nationality workers doing the same job will be paid the same rate of pay. Most picking jobs are piece work but all workers have to earn at least the minimum/living wage. Many will earn more than this by picking more than the minimum requirement. If they can't achieve the min wage they will be offered another job or sent back to the agency or dismissed. The sort of businesses that are employing these workers don't pay cash. Everyone will be P.A.Y.E.

Not disputing that they won’t be paid the same...what I’m saying is a lot of British people can’t work for that little money with out subsidies but foreign nationals can. It’s a catch 22.
Agencies putting seasonal staff on PAYE? I would of thought they would be self employed? If they was PAYE they would have to pay national insurance and be entitled to annual leave wouldn’t they? I don’t know the answer to be honest. I’d expect that there would be some cash transactions somewhere along the line though.

 

[hunta]

Not disputing that they won’t be paid the same...what I’m saying is a lot of British people can’t work for that little money with out subsidies but foreign nationals can. It’s a catch 22.
Agencies putting seasonal staff on PAYE? I would of thought they would be self employed? If they was PAYE they would have to pay national insurance and be entitled to annual leave wouldn’t they? I don’t know the answer to be honest. I’d expect that there would be some cash transactions somewhere along the line though.

Seasonal workers are on PAYE. They do pay NI and they do get annual leave. If there is a period where work is slack the employee will be given days off as paid holiday. Cash payments of any kind are past history. The farms accounts are audited every year and all cash used by the business will have to be covered by receipts.
I agree that minimum wage isn't enough for many Brits to live on. Bulgarians and Romanians do the work because the £ is worth 2.5x more to them than to a Brit. Also the majority of them live in rural areas where there is very little work and unemployment benefits are not as generous as in the UK.

 

[Archer]

Cash in hand? for 2 week casuals perhaps. Longer than that and they have to go on the books
Agency staff are PAYE - and minimum wages are paid.
Anyone involved in any area of supplying Multiples - who buy most of the Cat1/Class1 produce - are audited annually against that/those Multiples Codes of Practice.
Failure at audit can lead to suspension or removal as a supplier and loss of a Multiples' revenue can be devastating
Oh and on site caravan/worker accommodation is raided/checked by Border Agency/Police which means life as an agricultural worker it isn't as lax as people think

 

[FrenchieBoy]

Seasonal workers are on PAYE. They do pay NI and they do get annual leave. If there is a period where work is slack the employee will be given days off as paid holiday. Cash payments of any kind are past history. The farms accounts are audited every year and all cash used by the business will have to be covered by receipts.
I agree that minimum wage isn't enough for many Brits to live on. Bulgarians and Romanians do the work because the £ is worth 2.5x more to them than to a Brit. Also the majority of them live in rural areas where there is very little work and unemployment benefits are not as generous as in the UK.

This is quite true, especially the part about money being worth a lot more overseas than in the UK.
It brings to mind the first year that we were fruit picking. We were apple picking at Ledbury and there was a gang of Russians there and we got to know a couple of them quite well. One of them was a student called Artur who was a big monster of a young man, built like a brick outhouse, very intelligent and well educated and one of the most polite chaps you could want to meet. He would do the apple picking shift through the day and then as soon as we all knocked off for the day he would be off to another farm and be picking strawberries. We joking said to him one day "Artur, you are going to be a rick man when you go back to Russia, what are you going to do with all your money"! His reply was "I have worked very hard for many hours each day this year in the UK and I have saved as much as I can by living very meagrely and not drinking or buying anything I do not need. When I go back to Russia I will have earned and saved enough money to but my own farm!"
We lost touch with him but I have no doubt at all that is exactly what he did, I certainly hope that he ended up with his own small farm because he was willing to work hard for his goal! If he did get his farm (And I have no doubt that he achieved his goal) then he deserves the utmost respect! Many if not most of the eastern block pickers we knew sent most of their earnings back home regularly to help their families and did not squander it on drink or other unnecessary "recreational" things like many of the British pickers did that were employed on a casual basis!

 

[Archer]

FrenchieBoy, slight drift.
20 odd years ago my site inspections covered the Jacksons at Man of Ross, Cilla Clive at Ledbury and the Wye Fruits packhouse - I wonder if our paths ever "crossed"