Quote:
Originally Posted by wraymond
The problem is now the same as it has been for some time. Growers will not pay a living wage for home-grown labour. They won't compete with the benefit system.
The Eastern European seasonal pickers are grateful for whatever work they can get, back breaking though it is, and by all accounts even at the paltry minimum rates on offer, earn more than they could at home.
Our benefit system pays people not to work and is another way to mask the true position of the 'unemployment' economy. It goes a long way to reminding us of the same system that employed hundreds of hop pickers that used to migrate from London to Kent for the season to live in sheds, all those years ago.
People are still even now being exploited. I'd be happy to pay an extra £2 for a bag of spuds or 50p a day extra on a lettuce instead of the latest computer game every other month to a Chinese factory.
Fortunately nobody remembers Georgian times under another system with some similarities and the tragic starvation of families in Ireland. There ain't nothing new.
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sitting on the fence.
why should growers pay more if they can get the same job for less?
This is where the government should set a decent living wage and no matter where you are from, this is what you are paid. No state benefit should be more then then living wage, but lets not forget minimum wage.
If people choose not to work, no state help, growers must demonstrate they have tried to get local labour irrespective on nationality before then can employ foreign sourced labour.
Australia has a system but I don't fully know what it is, may be we should look at that
macafee2
anything else I have forgotten as I'm trying to cover all bases