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Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that wi
by scanr 7y ago
Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-and-veg-will-run-out-unless-britain-charters-planes-to-fly-in-farm-workers-from-eastern-europe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...
- andarleen 7y agoActually, this is a golden opportunity for east european countries to grow their agro industry. COVID now gives legal grounds to keep workers in their own country, so they neither catch the virus nor enjoy british racism. This can help their economies as well.
- burntoutfire 7y agoThere's plenty of agricultural industry in EE (at least in Poland), it's just that it pays a pittance, so the locals prefer to go west, while farmers employ migrants from poorer countries.
- djsumdog 7y agoThat's such a fucked up cycle.
- throwaway894345 7y agoDoesn’t it prosper everyone? What happens if the workers from the poorest countries aren’t allowed to work in the wealthier countries? Surely they and the wealthier countries are all worse off? “Non-zero-sum game” and all that...
- mantap 7y agoI've noticed that often people who think fruit picking and other "undesirable" jobs should be done by locsl people, never express any interest in doing the aforementioned jobs themselves.
- cortesoft 7y agoSo you think we should force the people to stay in the poorer country?
- pnako 7y agoYou can't force people to stay in a country, but you can certainly prevent people from coming in a country.
- andarleen 7y agoI dont think we should - COVID does. People are forced to stay in their own countries due to travel restrictions. And it is likely this pandemic will last for a while, and with summer coming, people might just as well work locally until this nightmare is over.
- kmlx 7y agohow can they work locally when they're not allowed to exit their flats? also the fear of gettting C19 in EE is much greater than in Western Europe. I think EE population will be the last one actually going outside. and there were reports of people saying they will never go out again like before.
- andarleen 7y agoI am not sure if the fear is greater - the fear is ending up in public hospitals in some of those countries, but people are pretty static and cities / homes not as crowded as in WE and as such more difficult to spread the virus. But re workers, restrictions of leaving ones home only apply to non essential work.
- andarleen 7y agoIndeed, but with growing costs and lowering stocks in WE, and people forced to stay in their own countries, things could change. Ideally for the benefit of of workers too as EE farmers might have to increase wages as well. Those who own plots of land could even start farming on their own and coop to sell in WE countries.
- listsfrin 7y agoYou can't grow 1 ha of tomatoes and go sell them them to supermarkets. They want stability of hundreds of kilograms every day.
- catalogia 7y agoWhy have eastern europeans do the work instead of the normal workers? It's not like eastern europeans have any special resistance to corona, nor are their lives worth less.
- soperj 7y agoYep, they wanted brexit, now live with it.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoExcept, it is the same in Germany and France.
- noemotion 7y agoI guess Eastern Europeans were the normal workers until now.
- catalogia 7y agoOh, well if that's the status quo that makes sense. I assumed the normal workers were unavailable due to quarantine/etc.
- saiya-jin 7y agoNo, the 'normal' workers (you mean I guess local) were unwilling to do the work for so little, while intensively supporting this situation by their shopping habits.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- catalogia 7y agoI mean whoever was doing the work last year. My comments in this thread have had some pretty wild score swings, I guess I stepped on a live rail. I'm not familiar with British agriculture politics.. I was thinking only of companies temporarily replacing a sick workforce with another (who would presumably themselves then become sick.) My comments were not intended to be commentary on British immigration, which I have no reason to care about.
- neilwilson 7y agoWith 3 million people in the UK still without work that want it - and many more laid off, redundant or self-employed without clients, the solution should be obvious. Pay a decent wage and you'll get the people. The era of cheap labour is over.
- H8crilA 7y agoI understand what you're saying but in this economic climate (of a massive layoffs) you won't even have to pay a "decent wage". A deflationary crisis is not supportive of high wages. Not in the least.
- rusk 7y agoI don’t think English people want to do this kind of work ...
- tomp 7y agoIf the 80% of salary from the government came with strings attached (i.e. "basic job", not UBI "basic income"), this wouldn't be a problem (provided that either masks are provided as well, or work is organized so that social distancing is maintained).
- Proven 7y agoit would be even less of a problem if it didn't.
- jsjddbbwj 7y agoThey don't want to do it because of the salary.
- throwaway0889 7y agoThe UK only needs low skilled workers for soft fruit that need to be hand picked. It's fine with every other crop. Maybe farmers should just switch to those. Cheap "British" strawberries are not worth the workes' abuse and low pay.
- neilwilson 7y agoI suspect we'll see a return to "pick your own" that used to be prevalent before Eastern Europe opened up.
- onion2k 7y agoThere are still lots of PYO strawberry fields around where I live (north east UK). They didn't go away.
- abraxas 7y agoI sincerely hope that Eastern Europeans will not fall for it. After being discriminated, ridiculed and targeted with Brexit now they are being seen as indispensable all of a sudden. English people have no shame. As a Pole I find their xenophobic two faced culture repulsive.
- williamdclt 7y agoTo be "fair" (definitively not the right term here), it's not exclusive to English people. As a frenchman in England, French people have a disgusting xenophobic culture towards eastern europeans too