barryqwalsh
Gold Member
- Sep 30, 2014
- 3,397
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I never really thought about the mechanics behind this until I interviewed a man who supplied temp workers to a British company that made bagged salads and fruit pots. Demand would fluctuate according to the weather, but British weather is notoriously changeable and fresh products have a short shelf life. So the company would only finalise its order for the number of temps it required for the night shift at 4pm on the day. Workers on standby would receive text messages: “you’re on for tonight” or “you’re off”.
Most of this hyper-flexible workforce had come to the UK from Europe. “We wouldn’t eat without eastern Europeans,” the man from the temp agency said confidently.
Was he right? Britain might be about to find out. Now that UK citizens have voted narrowly to leave the EU, the country’s immigration policy is in flux. Some want the UK to maintain the free movement of labour in exchange for access to the EU’s single market. But the leading candidates to replace David Cameron as prime minister have said any deal to leave the EU must involve control over future migration, since this was the promise made to Leave voters before the referendum.
There is talk of the country introducing an Australian-style points system that would admit high-skilled migrants such as engineers but stop low-paid migrants like salad-baggers.
If that is the policy on the table, it is time for politicians, employers and the public to think seriously about how it would affect the economy.
EU nationals account for 31 per cent of the workers in food manufacturing, 21 per cent of those in hotels and other accommodation, 16 per cent of those in agriculture and 15 per cent of those in warehouses. While current migrants probably won’t be sent home, people who want to limit low-paid migration say this would result in more jobs for British people in future.
Yet there are already plenty of jobs for British people. The proportion of UK nationals in work is at a near-record 74.4 per cent, higher than in 2004 when the “A8” eastern European countriesjoined the EU (which is when migration to the UK began to increase sharply). Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation think-tank, says the only significant pocket of unemployment left in Britain is among disabled people. “And we’re not about to send them out into the fields”.
There is also something about the nature of these jobs that makes them tough for UK nationals to do. These sectors usually require extreme flexibility from staff: the salad-baggers who wait for a text message to say they have work that night; the cleaners who cobble together piecemeal shifts at dusk and dawn; the fruit pickers living in caravans on farms.
When people say “migrants are doing the jobs that Brits are too lazy to do”, they are missing the point. These jobs may be palatable if you are a single person who has come to the UK to earn money as a stepping stone to a better future. But if you live here permanently, have children here, claim benefits here, they are not jobs on which you can easily build a life.
Farmers say one reason they cannot attract UK workers is the unwieldy benefit system: it does not make sense to do short-term, low-paid temp work that will wreak havoc with your benefit payments for weeks afterwards.
So employers deprived of access to flexible EU workers would face a choice. They could automate some work, but that would be tricky in sectors such as cleaning. They could stop expanding because they think they could not staff a new meat factory, say, or a new fruit farm. Or they could redesign the jobs to attract UK workers: more stable, less precarious, better paid.
Some migrant workers have beenpushing for these things already. The UK as a nation could have used regulation to help them. But until now, we seem to have accepted these jobs as they are in exchange for the cheap, convenient goods and services that depend on them.
Low-paid migrants are visible, but many of the benefits they bring are invisible: the British strawberries in the shops, that salad on the shelf just when you want it, the office that is dirty when you leave at night but clean on your return. Perhaps we’ll only really know what we’ve got when it’s gone.
[email protected]
Twitter: @sarahoconnor_
The UK will miss unskilled migrants after Brexit - FT.com
Most of this hyper-flexible workforce had come to the UK from Europe. “We wouldn’t eat without eastern Europeans,” the man from the temp agency said confidently.
Was he right? Britain might be about to find out. Now that UK citizens have voted narrowly to leave the EU, the country’s immigration policy is in flux. Some want the UK to maintain the free movement of labour in exchange for access to the EU’s single market. But the leading candidates to replace David Cameron as prime minister have said any deal to leave the EU must involve control over future migration, since this was the promise made to Leave voters before the referendum.
There is talk of the country introducing an Australian-style points system that would admit high-skilled migrants such as engineers but stop low-paid migrants like salad-baggers.
If that is the policy on the table, it is time for politicians, employers and the public to think seriously about how it would affect the economy.
EU nationals account for 31 per cent of the workers in food manufacturing, 21 per cent of those in hotels and other accommodation, 16 per cent of those in agriculture and 15 per cent of those in warehouses. While current migrants probably won’t be sent home, people who want to limit low-paid migration say this would result in more jobs for British people in future.
Yet there are already plenty of jobs for British people. The proportion of UK nationals in work is at a near-record 74.4 per cent, higher than in 2004 when the “A8” eastern European countriesjoined the EU (which is when migration to the UK began to increase sharply). Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation think-tank, says the only significant pocket of unemployment left in Britain is among disabled people. “And we’re not about to send them out into the fields”.
There is also something about the nature of these jobs that makes them tough for UK nationals to do. These sectors usually require extreme flexibility from staff: the salad-baggers who wait for a text message to say they have work that night; the cleaners who cobble together piecemeal shifts at dusk and dawn; the fruit pickers living in caravans on farms.
When people say “migrants are doing the jobs that Brits are too lazy to do”, they are missing the point. These jobs may be palatable if you are a single person who has come to the UK to earn money as a stepping stone to a better future. But if you live here permanently, have children here, claim benefits here, they are not jobs on which you can easily build a life.
Farmers say one reason they cannot attract UK workers is the unwieldy benefit system: it does not make sense to do short-term, low-paid temp work that will wreak havoc with your benefit payments for weeks afterwards.
So employers deprived of access to flexible EU workers would face a choice. They could automate some work, but that would be tricky in sectors such as cleaning. They could stop expanding because they think they could not staff a new meat factory, say, or a new fruit farm. Or they could redesign the jobs to attract UK workers: more stable, less precarious, better paid.
Some migrant workers have beenpushing for these things already. The UK as a nation could have used regulation to help them. But until now, we seem to have accepted these jobs as they are in exchange for the cheap, convenient goods and services that depend on them.
Low-paid migrants are visible, but many of the benefits they bring are invisible: the British strawberries in the shops, that salad on the shelf just when you want it, the office that is dirty when you leave at night but clean on your return. Perhaps we’ll only really know what we’ve got when it’s gone.
[email protected]
Twitter: @sarahoconnor_
The UK will miss unskilled migrants after Brexit - FT.com
