The low-wage EU citizens in the UK handled jobs the Brits wouldn't. Now that there is a shortage of them, Prince Charles has been encouraging furloughed Brits to do their share.
I always figured that was bollocks, the idea that the working class is too lazy or too proud to do certain jobs. Such claims by employers and right wing politicians need to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. Look at the agenda they are trying to push, and why.
People make the same sort of claims here in Australia. The reality is that Australians don't get hired for those jobs because they expect to be paid a proper wage and have reasonable conditions. Whereas foreign workers can be underpaid, pushed to do unpaid overtime, and they don't have the option to complain. Of course employers won't say "I don't want to hire Aussies because I'd have to pay them properly, I want to hire immigrants so I can exploit them and underpay them". So employers claim that Aussies don't want to do the jobs, and it's a claim that is difficult to prove or disprove.
Even in IT the same thing happens, we have huge numbers of IT workers unemployed in Australia or driving taxis or working as Uber drivers. The last company I worked for, they would put a new job ad up and within 24 hours they'd have 200 applications. But employers still claim that there is a skill shortage and they need to hire foreigners or bring in workers on temporary visas from the development centre in Bangalore (or some other foreign city). The skill shortage claims are pure bullshit. Most similar claims by employers in every industry are also bullshit.
The reason you never see an Aussie working in a Thai or Chinese restaurant in Sydney, or cleaning offices at night time, is because there are plenty of illegal immigrants and "students" who will do the job for $10 an hour or less (minimum wage is about $24 an hour for a casual worker). Of course you can pay an Aussie $10 an hour, but 6 months later he or she can take you to court and you'll have to provide a pile of backpay at the minimum wage and you will be up for costs and fines as well.
Well said, Mo! You're quite right.
I have actually worked at some of those jobs that Brits are " too lazy to do"' (eg potato picking and warehouse work) so has my son, plus an increasing number of other people that I know (as more and more people are made redundant from their proper jobs) . Have to say that casual work and zero-hour contracts are the killer here. If it's hard to live on minmum wage, it's downright impossible to live on randomly varying hours (most often much less than " full time") at that exact same low hourly rate but that's what many, many people are forced to try to do.
Our minimumum wage seems to considerably lower than the Aussie minimum wage (currently 8.70 GBP per hour) but then it might be that the cost of living is higher in Oz? Or it might be that we;ve slid even further downhill than you guys. Certtainly, its pretty rare for Brits to take former employers to court, we;ve been too thoroughly beaten down; and ruthless exploitation has become the norm.
The idea that the immigrants are- or should be- grateful for the chance to share our "privelged lifestyle"" is ludicrous. I've found that immigrant workmates last no longer, in any given workplace than the rest of us, because they equally find that they can't earn enough to pay their rent. And also they tend to become a lot more angry at being worked like slaves and treated like dirt than the native Brits do. So rage-quitting by recent immigrants is common. That's because that's not what they're used to and not what they expect from Britain. People tend to forget that a lot of these immigrants are middle-class folk who once had comfortable lifesyles and expected at least the same in Britain. Also, even quite a number the poor ones that i've worked beside have told me that they could be poor with a lot more dignity back home (eg in the Middle East or Africa)
Once -upon-a-time, Brits could always quit and live on unemployment benefits if they found wages and working conitions unacceptable. But that no longer works as a get -out. You'll be made to jump through so many hoops to prove that you're willing to work ( up to including participating in workfare schemes) that "looking for work"becomes a full-time job; a very depressing and unrewarding full-time job that only pays a mere fraction of minimum wage (unless you have a number of dependants) and which gets withdrawn at the drop of a hat, often for no good reason, or no reason at all . Frankly, I know a number of currently unemployed people, but I don't know anyone who'd claim unemployment benefits (or "jobseeker's Allowance "as the call it now) , not if they've tried that once before (in the past decade or so) . Instead, they build up debt , if they can, or lean on family for support, or work for a pittance in the Black economy and if all else fails, slide onto the street. All of this would have a dramatic effect on the unemployment stats (that is, masking the true scale of the problem) as well as fuelling an ever-downward spiral in pay and working conditions.
Almost
nobody, irrespective of country of origin, lasts long in some jobs such as Deliveroo (who get round minimim wage requirements by making it "piece work"essentially) or Agency care work (because the agencies only pay for time spent working, not time spent travelling, and the latter often takes up the majority of the worker's time) or...well, virtually all of the unskilled labouring jobs, But they can go on and on exploiting people, because there are always more workers who are willing to give it a whirl, an endless supply of them indeed.
As for farm work, that's seasonal, isn't it? so it couldn't possibly serve as a family's main source of income. What's more, the farmers have ways of getting out of paying minimum wage (the old "piece work" trick. Plus they usually pay cash . ) Back in the eighties, they were picking truckloads of (mostly) redundant factory workers , who were desperate to supplement their meagre dole, from pick-up points in nearby cities, to help with the harvest. Then the DWP started sending investigators into the fields to catch and prosecute these "benefits frauds". The government showd no interst in prosecuting the farmers , of course. I don't know how the farmers have managed since then, because in my experience , its no use declaring the pittance you get, not if you're on benefits, because you only get to keep a fiver per week of your earnings,
and you get your dole money stopped for several weeks whilst they re-calculate it, which is, of course disastrous for anyone who's living hand-to -mouth ( I actually
tried doing it the honest way, dumb autie that i am) . What's more, if you're working really hard in the fields, that fiver is easily swallowed up by the extra food you'll consume, so net gain for the worker is zero.
So, yeah, since that Government crackdown, no half-way sensible unemployed British person will take on farm work. We all became too lazy all of a sudden
. And the Government have cracked down ever-harder on benefits claimaints, since then . i don't know how the farmers are coping since, but i've read reports to the effect that Southern farmers (or some of them at least) are pulling in young migrants who have family homes to go back to , putting them up in purpose built dormitories
and actually paying them decent wages. That reminds me of when British students would swarm over to France, during the summer holidays to work in the vineyards (I don't know if that still happens?) . And yeah, that would work. Of course that would work. And I don't recall anybody saying that was necessary because the French were too lazy to work their own vineyards.
Ofc , I've no personal experience (of every corner of Industry, but it's not difficult to guess that similar stories apply to just about everyrthing.
I've had nothing to say about EU migrants, above, because , in my own experience, EU migrants -especially Poles. tend to have some kind of big advantage over native brits, immigrants from outside the EU, everybody else. I'm not at all sure I understand how that works, maybe a number of social and economic factors come into play, but it's definitely
not because Poles work harder. They're hiuman beings , same as everybody else, with the same range of human character traits. Some of them are lazy as fuck, but they get away with it. I've seen the lazy ones get offerered promotions and other plum jobs, in preference to other, more suitable, canditates just the same as the hardworking Poles. Also., they tend to get offered those rare and precious permanent, full-time jobs that almost nobody else can get. It's just as if they're an elite class, like the British Raj in India. As a consequence, many of our black and asian immigrants really hate the Poles, more than their white British counterparts do . It doesn't help that most of those immigrants are multi-lingual, proud of speaking perfect English , and expect to gain an advantage by that. To then be passed over, in favour of a Pole who can't speak English at all (as has happened in some cases ) is especially galling for them.
I should add, iI certainly don't hate the Poles. I hate the system that creates such inequalities, that blames the poor for the mess they're in, and that continues to pull more and more people into this sinking boat. A small country of 70 million? It was a small country of 60 million just five minutes ago and already badly overpopulated. Even the Tories have startied to think that we have more workers here than they can use . But it's not merely a case of not enough work to go round ; we don't (and can't) grow enough near food to go round , and are highly dependant on imprts . In the event of war , or some other crisis, disrupting food supplies, then we shan't be getting leaner and actually healthier'on our meagre rations like we did during World War II (when the UK poulation was less than 50 million,
and we had more farmland) we'll be starving 'to death in droves. I feel it's pretty mad to live here already , given that likelihood hanging over us. '(But then, I also feel that it's mad to live on the slopes of an active volcano, or on top the San Andreas fault line, and note that doesnt deter people)
