peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
Farm labourers were on zero hour contracts before the term was even concocted. I have no issue about immigrants being brought in to do the jobs we need doing, whether from the EU or the rest of the world.......
Current Affairs EU In or Out
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Farm labourers were on zero hour contracts before the term was even concocted. I have no issue about immigrants being brought in to do the jobs we need doing, whether from the EU or the rest of the world.......
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
Yeah farm labourers smuggled in and kept in sheds is a cracking example of the days of yore.
Once the likes of Rees Mogg gets his way and we can bin off those awful EU workers rights, we’ll no doubt be able to stick kids up chimneys again.
cant speak for anyone else Bruce but i dont wish ill will on the people of the EU, they are not any different to me, want whats best for themselves and there families , mostly quite happy to have a decent job, roof over there heads, few bob in there pockets and there kids to have a decent future,would be quite happy if they get to do that in the future.
A good point you make about the governments using this to cover up there own performances while all this is going on i agree totally.
Do not get me started on Boris, horrible, ambitious rat, would say anything to further his own aims.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
Oh the irony
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
Is this an example of the grown up remainer argument for staying in the EU.........
Many on here have said that the EU will cease to exist in the coming years.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
Merely poking fun at your daft example, trying to make out zero hours contracts were something that were widespread in days of yore. Their normalisation is abhorrent Peter.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
It’s become the mantra of the right wing media as the car crash that is Brexit becomes ever clearer.
The mantra has notably moved, it’s now - well it’s all going to crash and burn anyway so we might as well be out first, we’ll have a massive advantage in that you know.....
Watch last weeks BBC 4 history of food growers in Britain - that will shatter the myth propaganda the gang master farmers of today peddle......
lies all lies infamy they've all got it in for me- I worked in horticultural fields at the age of 16 years old back breaking work - now its a doddle with machinery!
The farmers don't want to pay the minimum wage - end of!
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
Sorry, but Syriza?? They've done exactly as they've been told by the EU. They inherited all the damage. The EU/IMF are not bailing out Greece, they are bailing out the French and German banks. Greece is little more than a conduit. If Syriza had really wanted to shake things up, they'd have gone along with Varoufakis's Plan B; instead, they caved entirely. They could scarely have been more servile.
The people who destroyed Greece are the previous moderate sober responsible establishment liberals, who looted the coffers and hoarded the plunder in secret offshore accounts. If the EU truly cared to track down where the money went to pay down the debt, they need look no further than Luxembourg - as the EU well knows.
Through it all, and despite the entire world knowing full well that the moderate sober responsible establishment Greek liberals were lying through their teeth about the accounts, the German banks were nonetheless delighted to keep pumping money in, entirely aware that the EU would just bail them out in full and they'd never be held accountable.
I'm not sure you really understand what happened in Greece... you should try Adam Tooze, or even the Financial Times at this point.
Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
It’s not ‘end of’ though Joey. Eastern Europeans aren’t rushing over here to fill the roles due to the devaluation of the pound and the perceived anti foreign workers sentiment amongst the populous. If they’ve never paid minimum wage then why did they have no real Recruitment issue in recent years?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44230865
Nothing has changed as yet, and the way Brexit is moving like a snail is not the reason - may be cash in hand days are over then?
Link not working on my I pad!
Syriza were elected on the promise that they would sock it to the man, just as leave campaigners said they would do. Reality has bitten them just as it is the Brexiters. I'm not sure in what galaxy looting and cronyism can be regarded as liberal btw. In fact, since 1995 to 2015 the president has come from the Greek Socialist Party. They were then replaced by the radical left. In the lower house the parliament has switched from the socialists to new democracy in pretty much every election for the last 30 years.
there you go joey66, even the archers radio 4 running a story last few weeks saying the pickers have gone home and none of the locals want the job even those without a job so it must be true?
interesting link in there as well about robots doing the job, a UK university have harvested the first seed to crop harvest entirely by automation this year.
here is the link you cant open
Over half of recruitment companies could not find the labour even in the "quiet" first months of this year.
The figure has been released by the Association of Labour Providers.
A survey by the National Farmers Union shows that last year there was a 12.5% shortfall of seasonal workers required to work on horticulture farms.
This led to some valuable produce being left to rot in the fields.
The strawberry-picking robots doing a job humans won't
Image captionThe horticulture sector needs 80,000 seasonal workers a year
A total of 99% of seasonal workers on British farms come from Eastern Europe. Two-thirds of these come from Romania and Bulgaria.
Kent-based AG Recruitment and Management works in Romania to supply labour for 80 growers across the UK.
Over the next few months it needs to find 4,000 people to pick strawberries, raspberries, and eventually apples and pears. The agency is nowhere near that target, and is having to call farmers to say it will not have enough pickers for them.
According to co-director, Estera Amesz, the numbers of people wanting to work in Britain fell sharply after Brexit. A key issue was the fall in the value of the pound. She says it is also down to the uncertainty; people aren't sure what documents they now need.
"We used to have queues outside our office in Bucharest. Thirty to 40 people would come a day. Now, on a good day, it's a handful. We used to take the crème de la crème. Now, we are scraping the barrel."
The firm runs criminal history checks and the candidates do dexterity tests, but Mrs Amesz says her company has had to widen the net. She says she now considers those that, "have two hands and two legs, and stand a 50% chance of making it".
Rather than people coming to the company offices, they now have to travel deep into the Romanian countryside to sell the idea of coming to work in the UK.
Image captionGeorgetta Sandulescu grows her own strawberries and sells them by the roadside
At one presentation in the city of Barlad, close to the border with Moldova, 30 people turn up, but only five sign up.
Alina Stan, 31, decides to make the journey. She has come to the UK before to pick flowers and fruit. With the money, she's building a house for her and her family. But as soon as she can, she'll stop coming. She says: "We hope in the next two years to be able to finish our home. But leaving my children behind is very difficult."
Image captionAlina will journey almost 3,000km to work picking fruit at a farm in Birmingham
According to Doug Amesz, Estera Amesz' husband and business partner: "We need an incentive. Previously we were looking for people with some English, now we find it difficult to recruit anyone with English."
Romania is one of the poorest countries in Europe. It is one of the largest recipients of EU money.
However, almost 30 years after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 and the fall of the communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, its economy is growing at 6.9%. That's a much faster rate compared to Britain's.
It's creating a newly wealthy middle class.
Image captionGeography student Puiu Jonut, says English people can pick their own fruit
In Iasi, Romania's second city, young people say they have no intention of picking fruit.
Puiu Jonut, 23, studies geography.
"The English pick and choose what they want to do and leave the harder jobs for the foreigners," he told BBC News.
"There are a lot of English people that could work the fields and not let the fruit rot. That's why Brexit to me was really strange because the foreigners are coming to do the hard jobs and the low-paid jobs - surely you want them to stay."
Growers in Romania are also finding it tough to find pickers.
The director of the Research and Development Centre for Fruit Growing in Iasi, Gelu Corneanu, said: "It's really difficult to find workers to harvest our crops, mainly because they are attracted to other European countries.
"People tend to go and harvest garlic in Spain, then they harvest cherries in Romania and then they harvest strawberries in Greece."
Image captionGelu Corneau says he struggles to find enough workers to pick his cherries
British farmers warned last year of the difficulties they were facing with recruitment, and according to the ALP report, three-quarters of agriculture and horticulture businesses anticipate shortages in low and unskilled roles in 2018.
Of these, over a quarter envisage a labour supply crisis. Some farmers have increased wages, bonuses, improved accommodation and other benefits to try to attract more foreign workers to come.
The government has pledged to address the issue of whether or not to introduce a scheme to give seasonal workers from further afield special permits to work in the UK, similar to the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) that was closed in 2013. So far, no alternative has been proposed.
Image caption90% of British farmers expect it to be harder to find seasonal labour this year
In a statement, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: "Defra and the Home Office are working closely to ensure the labour needs of the agriculture sector are met once we leave the EU.
"We have been clear that up until December 2020, employers in the agricultural and food processing sectors will be free to recruit EU citizens to fill vacancies and those arriving to work will be able to stay in the UK afterwards."
Gardocki
Player Valuation: £8m
We aren’t going to agree on it. I think Brexit is a disaster. You don’t. At least we can agree that Everton will probably win the league next year.'Growth' or whatever else you wish to call it, historically goes up and down. As does employment.
We voted in to a trading agreement, not a political union (yawn, yawn, for the 1,000th time).
I just LOVE your sweeping last statement. Is that from the Bruce bank of throwaway sentences to lob in now and again...!
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