Hi, no more immigrants taken our jobs you cried, we voted, the British jobs for British workers won, but the jobs are NOT being taken up by home grown workers, the latest outcry, by fruit growers, 80,000 jobs go a begging, that fruit may rot in fields, cost of fruit may rise, why, does the great British worker deed fruit picking beneath him, is the minimum wage not enough for him, and more jobs will come on the market, fish gutting amongst them, let’s hear it for the great British unemployed, Brian
the rural poor are in a worse pickle than the urban poor!
Having lived and worked in the country all my days until I had to give up work after 47 years because off ms I suppose I could be deemed one off the rural poor the problem with farming now a days it’s no longer a low intelligence occupation it’s a high tech buisness now so it needs it’s workers to be tech savvy . fruit picking is hard work normal the worker get payed by te kilo picked and weighed at one time there was a army off old buses ferried pickers from towns like perth dundee to farms on the case off gowrie not any more people nowadays would rather go without than work on this kind off work the money certainly needs to be better but the price to the super markets needs to be better too then the earning off the worker could be better Other factor is the mindset of the eastern European is changeing to more like that off our low paid people probably quite rightly . Hope you are all as good as can be
I did some fruit picking after i moved to Dorset when i was 13. Me and my mate were paid by weight and were working really hard and doing a good job and earning really good money for a couple of kids.We were picking gooseberries and were getting scratched to pieces doing it but accepted that as the money was good. Other older people there picked much slower minimising the injuries to themselves and generally seemed to be just enjoying being in the fresh air earning a little bit of dough. That’s the good thing about piece work it allows people to go at a pace that they are comfortable with and in that respect would seem fair to all including the employer or so you might think?!
Well of course i hadn’t factored in the greed of the Tory Landowner who decided under the fair system my hard work was earning me too much and she needed a bigger slice from my hard work. It was ok as we were only kids to take advantage of us for her own gain and she announced the rate was cutting in half! not for everyone but just us,no issue with the quality of work we were just too quick and she objected to paying us a fair wage.
Even at that young age it was hard to bite my tonge but after politely pointing out the facts of piece work i did.
The next day me and my mate had a lovely time messing around most of the day before picking a few boxes properly to guage the weight to make the ones filled with mud and stone nice and realistic.weighed em in got the cash and then called her out for being the disgrace she was and pissed off to spend our less than hard earned but well deserved cash.
Even now 30 years later i remember i clear as anything. The lesson i learned back then has probably stood me in good stead for dealing with my wife’s immoral employers and the likes of the DWP since her problems started but i guess the story also shows even at that age i didn’t like liberties being taken and would try and fight injustice when i could!
Ollie
Ollie, nothing changes where money is concerned, the rich want to be richer, no matter at the costs, ever since I was young I’ve heard, and enjoyed, the, make money but keep workers down, from relations who where miners, and paid £X per ton, but the ton was actually 22 and a half hundredweight ton, the extra two and a half hundredweight was classed as dust, irrespective if it was or not, upto companies cutting targets if I made too much money on sites, to, school leavers being taken on for work (?) experience being paid expenses for full day, we still need to keep the red flag flying high, Brian
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