UK Immigration: No visas for low-skilled workers

[Ian Reus]

Was this expected post brexit?

Low-skilled workers would not get visas under post-Brexit immigration plans unveiled by the government.

It is urging employers to "move away" from relying on "cheap labour" from Europe and invest in retaining staff and developing automation technology.

The Home Office said EU and non-EU citizens coming to the UK would be treated equally after UK-EU free movement ends on 31 December.

More details in here.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-51550421

 

[Sky1981]

This is what brexiter wants right?

 

[The Boy]

This has a massive impact on the fruit and veg picking industry. the vast majority of labour there is EU based and seasonal. Many farmers have tried to recruit British replacements but can't generally because seasonal work is very unpopular and it is often in remote areas where there just are not enough people to fill all the vacancies. There have already been examples of fruit and veg rotting in fields because the people are not there to pick them and automation isn't good enough yet to replace people.

 

[George Owen]

They'll just probably gonna raise the number of working holiday visa to cover for it (young people from 17 to 30yo). Win win.

Like in Australia and NZ, where the majority of the farming/picking/packing industry jobs are filled by WHV workers.

 

[4bars]

They'll just probably gonna raise the number of working holiday visa to cover for it (young people from 17 to 30yo). Win win.

Like in Australia and NZ, where the majority of the farming/picking/packing industry jobs are filled by WHV workers.

As a person that had been travelling extensively, used WHV, lived in the UK, OZ, Canada (among other countries) would not occur to me how a young person would go farming/picking in the UK. watering and industry maybe as you want to find an easy job in the city. but farming and at the wages paid to the current immigrants...doubt it

 

[The Boy]

They'll just probably gonna raise the number of working holiday visa to cover for it (young people from 17 to 30yo). Win win.

Like in Australia and NZ, where the majority of the farming/picking/packing industry jobs are filled by WHV workers.

It can be quite a shitty deal
https://www.theguardian.com/austral...-law-leaves-backpackers-exploited-and-exposed

Also many of the EU workers that do this are skilled at it, lots has to be picked, sorted, packed and distributed in very small time scales to get the fresh fruit and veg on our supermarket shelves, lots of farmers prefer the regular returnees from the EU as they already have the skills having returned to the same farm year after year. WHV won't cover this at all.

 

[George Owen]

As a person that had been travelling extensively, used WHV, lived in the UK, OZ, Canada (among other countries) would not occur to me how a young person would go farming/picking in the UK. watering and industry maybe as you want to find an easy job in the city. but farming and at the wages paid to the current immigrants...doubt it

Minimum wage in UK is not enough to live on the countryside?

Let's say you make £ 1700 per month. (working 10 hours per day monday to friday)

Would that be enough to live for a month in the countryside, while saving £ 500 per month? (living on the classic noodles diet in some caravan park)
If its a couple, even mayor savings.

 

[Abizzz]

They'll just probably gonna raise the number of working holiday visa to cover for it (young people from 17 to 30yo). Win win.

Like in Australia and NZ, where the majority of the farming/picking/packing industry jobs are filled by WHV workers.

Yeah but people are actually excited to go and see Australia and NZ.

 

[George Owen]

Yeah but people are actually excited to go and see Australia and NZ.

For sure. I doubt UK will struggle to attract people though.

Some will go only to work and save money, and then spend their savings backpacking around the warmer Europe, for example.

 

[Abizzz]

For sure. I doubt UK will struggle to attract people though.

Some will go only to work and save money, and then spend their savings backpacking around the warmer Europe, for example.

Possibly. It would all depend on the conditions I guess. If people are going to live and work in the UK to earn money for travels around Europe afterwards they'll need to earn a decent amount though.

 

[Sky1981]

For sure. I doubt UK will struggle to attract people though.

Some will go only to work and save money, and then spend their savings backpacking around the warmer Europe, for example.

Why UK? You can go next door and it offers more opportunities, roughly the same pay, less the hassle.

 

[altodevil]

This will destroy most of Scotland's rural economy

 

[Skills]

This has a massive impact on the fruit and veg picking industry. the vast majority of labour there is EU based and seasonal. Many farmers have tried to recruit British replacements but can't generally because seasonal work is very unpopular and it is often in remote areas where there just are not enough people to fill all the vacancies. There have already been examples of fruit and veg rotting in fields because the people are not there to pick them and automation isn't good enough yet to replace people.

They've made an exception to fruit picking. The cynic in me reckons if you look at the 'excluded' list of industries, it will probably not make that much of a difference.

The biggest difference will be they'll be able to cut down massively on workers rights, bring even cheaper labour in from outside the EU and make it an even bigger race to the bottom.

 

[The Boy]

They've made an exception to fruit picking. The cynic in me reckons if you look at the 'excluded' list of industries, it will probably not make that much of a difference.

The biggest difference will be they'll be able to cut down massively on workers rights, bring even cheaper labour in from outside the EU and make it an even bigger race to the bottom.

Sorry if they have then my posts are irrelevant, but I read it from the BBC article and saw this

Meanwhile, National Farmers' Union president Minette Batters raised "serious concerns" about the "failure to recognise British food and farming's needs" in the plans.

And the Food and Drink Federation spoke of concerns about bakers, meat processors and workers making food like cheese and pasta not qualifying under the new system.

Which suggested they hadn't made that exception, though they have talked about it in the past.

 

[The Boy]

They've made an exception to fruit picking. The cynic in me reckons if you look at the 'excluded' list of industries, it will probably not make that much of a difference.

The biggest difference will be they'll be able to cut down massively on workers rights, bring even cheaper labour in from outside the EU and make it an even bigger race to the bottom.

Ah seen this now, so it's a partial exemption that doesn't really help at all

Special arrangements are being made for seasonal workers who harvest the fields but this is only set at 10,000 places, far below the National Farmers’ Union’s (NFU) demands for temporary visas for 70,000 in 2021. Minette Batters, the head of the NFU, said it was “ironic” that the government was encouraging people to increase the amount of fruit and veg in diets, yet is “making it harder for that fruit and veg to be produced in Britain”.

 

[4bars]

Minimum wage in UK is not enough to live on the countryside?

Let's say you make £ 1700 per month. (working 10 hours per day monday to friday)

Would that be enough to live for a month in the countryside, while saving £ 500 per month? (living on the classic noodles diet in some caravan park)
If its a couple, even mayor savings.

Oh for sure is possible to live, but that is not what the people on WHV expect on. We are not talking of people that comes from countries to be developed in most cases but people from western countries that mostly they look for experiences and save money in a short period of time to travel around. Thats what fruit picking in Oz (less than before), NZ and Canada offers in their WHV. Saving 3k - 5k easily depending on the area. Hardworking long hours. Though so foreign fruitpickers in UK work hard long hours for not much money

Sure WHV experience might help a very tiny fraction, but surely will not cover a decent part of the workforce from less developed parts in europe that is not only money that they feel attract, but the chance to be able to stay, complete different situation than WHV in most cases


And just posting I realized it was sarcasm. A bit thick tonight

 

[Skills]

Ah seen this now, so it's a partial exemption that doesn't really help at all

Okay fair enough. Tbh I'm not exactly against this. If your business needs hugely underpaid labour to survive, it really isn't sustainable.

And if the government want to promote homegrown fruit and veg, they need to find a different way to subsidise the supply.

 

[dogrob]

On the plus side think of all the bone idle lazy British people who will have to work again for menial wages because Johnny Foreigner cant come and work, the rise in prices because British workers find the work to menial so the produce rots in the fields, slowly I am starting to despair with the UK I really am.

 

[Drifter]

Looking forward to these low skilled brexiteers filling the gap.

 

[The Boy]

Okay fair enough. Tbh I'm not exactly against this. If your business needs hugely underpaid labour to survive, it really isn't sustainable.

And if the government want to promote homegrown fruit and veg, they need to find a different way to subsidise the supply.

The point is it is low paid not underpaid, you get paid between 8.50 and 10 pounds per hour depending on how quick you are and if you're involved in distribution you get a little more. That's above minimum wage and in line with the living wage.

The cheap price of food in the UK and the competition between supermarkets means the margins on fruit and veg are small. This kind of work appealed to EU seasonal workers as their accomodation was provided and they could save good money. Plenty of farmers have tried to get more UK workers to do it, some do but it is not popular at all, the NFU ran a campaign to encourage more UK residents to take it up, again not much effect. All it means is that more of our fruit and veg will come from abroad like Spain for instance and less will grown here. That's damaging for the UK economy and environmentally as our fresh food travels far further from field to fork.

But surely we want fresh fruit and veg to be cheap and available to all, so we should allow the farms that produce it at an affordable price to do so in the only way they can currently.

 

[Fiskey]

These rules look excellent. Really pleased.

 

[Steven Seagull]

This is where left/right ideologies clash a bit for people I think.

Lots of foreign lads on building sites work harder for longer for less money than British counterparts. This drives wages down, sometimes unnaturally and it’s tough for some young (or old) British lads to get short term jobs because it isn’t sustainable for them when they live here permanently. That said, it’s true that lots of able bodied British people simply can’t be arsed with manual work.

Some people in this thread would be horrified by their own comments about poor/unskilled British people if it was another subject that didn’t involve this current Tory government.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

This is where left/right ideologies clash a bit for people I think.

Lots of foreign lads on building sites work harder for longer for less money than British counterparts. This drives wages down, sometimes unnaturally and it’s tough for some young (or old) British lads to get short term jobs because it isn’t sustainable for them when they live here permanently. That said, it’s true that lots of able bodied British people simply can’t be arsed with manual work.

Some people in this thread would be horrified by their own comments about poor/unskilled British people if it was another subject that didn’t involve this current Tory government.

Doesn't this basically give the green light for low skilled British workers to find more stable work and unionize for better pay and benefits? I wonder how a conservative government fancies that. Populism and conservative economics usually don't work.

 

[Classical Mechanic]

Doesn't this basically give the green light for low skilled British workers to find more stable work and unionize for better pay and benefits? I wonder how a conservative government fancies that. Populism and conservative economics usually don't work.

Boris is leading a new kind conservatism that embraces populist concerns and shifts left on economic policies. His key to real power is through the working class communities that he won over in the recent election so he has to enfranchise them in some way. He forced the Saj out to take over the exchequer so he can green light public spending without Tory economic ideologues getting in his way. I think economically his government will be more Keynesian than classical.

I think we'll see a lot of pragmatic political calculations around this, he'll fund the NHS and make a big song and dance out of it because he sees that as his key to winning the next election but he'll cut public spending further in areas with less electoral impact. Cuts to council budgets, for example, will be seen as permissible because the local councils tend to get the resentment for failures on their patch.

He has to balance this new approach with the traditional conservatism in his party and their traditional base but with his majority he has a lot of power at the moment. He also benefits from having no credible opposition for those the might feel disenfranchised to migrate to.

 

[EwanI Ted]

This is where left/right ideologies clash a bit for people I think.

Lots of foreign lads on building sites work harder for longer for less money than British counterparts. This drives wages down, sometimes unnaturally and it’s tough for some young (or old) British lads to get short term jobs because it isn’t sustainable for them when they live here permanently. That said, it’s true that lots of able bodied British people simply can’t be arsed with manual work.

Some people in this thread would be horrified by their own comments about poor/unskilled British people if it was another subject that didn’t involve this current Tory government.

Its a problem of micro vs macro. At an individual level, there are cases where foreign workers can drive down wages, for sure. If its happening in your back yard, its not unreasonable to be upset by it. At the population level though, we have an ageing population and need more working age people than we're producing if we're going to power the economy enough to pay for that ageing population. That means immigration, unless something dramatic happens with the birth rate.

I don't think you can expect people to stop worrying about the fact that they're paid badly in the present by consoling themselves with some positive macroeconomic outlook 20 years into the future, people don't think like that. But we do have to find a way of getting people to understand that immigration makes us all richer, not poorer, in the end, and that the answer is to fix the short term negative impacts of immigration, rather than lowering immigration altogether. Lowering immigration now just turns a medium sized problem now into a massive problem in the long term.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

Boris is leading a new kind conservatism that embraces populist concerns and shifts left on economic policies. His key to real power is through the working class communities that he won over in the recent election so he has to enfranchise them in some way. He forced the Saj out to take over the exchequer so he can green light public spending without Tory economic ideologues getting in his way. I think economically his government will be more Keynesian than classical.

I think we'll see a lot of pragmatic political calculations around this, he'll fund the NHS and make a big song and dance out of it because he sees that as his key to winning the next election but he'll cut public spending further in areas with less electoral impact. Cuts to council budgets, for example, will be seen as permissible because the local councils tend to get the resentment for failures on their patch.

He has to balance this new approach with the traditional conservatism in his party and their traditional base but with his majority he has a lot of power at the moment. He also benefits from having no credible opposition for those the might feel disenfranchised to migrate to.

That makes it sound like his economic policy will lean more socialist than conservative. It would be interesting as to how long the business leaders, who have traditionally been the bastion of conservative funding and support stick to him if the employee unions start getting stronger and become more emboldened to demand higher wages with a shallow staffing pool. It might steal the thunder from under the traditional labour support but it would also alienate the big money.

 

[horsechoker]

Measure like these are only taken to appeal to the xenophobic and racist voters for the Cons.

 

[Red_toad]

The point is it is low paid not underpaid, you get paid between 8.50 and 10 pounds per hour depending on how quick you are and if you're involved in distribution you get a little more. That's above minimum wage and in line with the living wage.

The cheap price of food in the UK and the competition between supermarkets means the margins on fruit and veg are small. This kind of work appealed to EU seasonal workers as their accomodation was provided and they could save good money. Plenty of farmers have tried to get more UK workers to do it, some do but it is not popular at all, the NFU ran a campaign to encourage more UK residents to take it up, again not much effect. All it means is that more of our fruit and veg will come from abroad like Spain for instance and less will grown here. That's damaging for the UK economy and environmentally as our fresh food travels far further from field to fork.

But surely we want fresh fruit and veg to be cheap and available to all, so we should allow the farms that produce it at an affordable price to do so in the only way they can currently.

Jeez I was on £8 a hour back in 1998 in a shitty job. Wage growth in the UK must be great for those that need the cash most...

 

[Fiskey]

Its a problem of micro vs macro. At an individual level, there are cases where foreign workers can drive down wages, for sure. If its happening in your back yard, its not unreasonable to be upset by it. At the population level though, we have an ageing population and need more working age people than we're producing if we're going to power the economy enough to pay for that ageing population. That means immigration, unless something dramatic happens with the birth rate.

I don't think you can expect people to stop worrying about the fact that they're paid badly in the present by consoling themselves with some positive macroeconomic outlook 20 years into the future, people don't think like that. But we do have to find a way of getting people to understand that immigration makes us all richer, not poorer, in the end, and that the answer is to fix the short term negative impacts of immigration, rather than lowering immigration altogether. Lowering immigration now just turns a medium sized problem now into a massive problem in the long term.

Automation is a risk here though. A lot of people think 20 years in the future there will be fewer jobs, so if we encourage immigration now we will just be left with a bigger problem when that hits.

 

[Fiskey]

That makes it sound like his economic policy will lean more socialist than conservative. It would be interesting as to how long the business leaders, who have traditionally been the bastion of conservative funding and support stick to him if the employee unions start getting stronger and become more emboldened to demand higher wages with a shallow staffing pool. It might steal the thunder from under the traditional labour support but it would also alienate the big money.

I'm not sure. If you take the example of the US, Google, Apple etc. average salary is super high as they're mainly employing tech specialists. Amazon will be the same when they fully automate their warehouses and delivery mechanisms. They are the big money now, and not traditional industrialists.

 

[Steven Seagull]

Its a problem of micro vs macro. At an individual level, there are cases where foreign workers can drive down wages, for sure. If its happening in your back yard, its not unreasonable to be upset by it. At the population level though, we have an ageing population and need more working age people than we're producing if we're going to power the economy enough to pay for that ageing population. That means immigration, unless something dramatic happens with the birth rate.

I don't think you can expect people to stop worrying about the fact that they're paid badly in the present by consoling themselves with some positive macroeconomic outlook 20 years into the future, people don't think like that. But we do have to find a way of getting people to understand that immigration makes us all richer, not poorer, in the end, and that the answer is to fix the short term negative impacts of immigration, rather than lowering immigration altogether. Lowering immigration now just turns a medium sized problem now into a massive problem in the long term.

Good post and good points about how we go about trying to get people to see the bigger picture. I think more of the following post should work a treat...

Measure like these are only taken to appeal to the xenophobic and racist voters for the Cons.

 

[Adisa]

Wage deflation was my thesis at undergraduate level.
The argument falls flat when you realise the areas most affected by this aren't the areas that are most pro these policies.
On the macro economic level, the evidence of wage deflation is even lower.
This is simply a cultural decision, not an economic one.

 

[Wednesday at Stoke]

I'm not sure. If you take the example of the US, Google, Apple etc. average salary is super high as they're mainly employing tech specialists. Amazon will be the same when they fully automate their warehouses and delivery mechanisms. They are the big money now, and not traditional industrialists.

Yeah but we're talking about low wage workers here, not the kind that work at google and apple.

 

[Fiskey]

Yeah but we're talking about low wage workers here, not the kind that work at google and apple.

But I don't think Conservative party funding will be affected as the new business leaders don't rely on low wage workers, so it low wage workers unionising won't be an issue.

 

[EwanI Ted]

Automation is a risk here though. A lot of people think 20 years in the future there will be fewer jobs, so if we encourage immigration now we will just be left with a bigger problem when that hits.

If people believe that then they believe it, from a political perspective people need to be reassured about it. But its not a serious argument from an immigration perspective because the number of jobs in the country is proportionate to its population, not fixed. Whether the population grows or shrinks, the proportionate impact of automation will be the same.

If anything you could, tongue firmly in cheek, suggest its an argument in favour of immigration for low skilled work. No point letting British people get used to working in jobs that will be the first to disappear. Better off training them for the mid-skilled roles that will become the lowest rung on the ladder when the singularity arrives automation gets really widespread.

 

[Fiskey]

If people believe that then they believe it, from a political perspective people need to be reassured about it. But its not a serious argument from an immigration perspective because the number of jobs in the country is proportionate to its population, not fixed. Whether the population grows or shrinks, the proportionate impact of automation will be the same.

If anything you could, tongue firmly in cheek, suggest its an argument in favour of immigration for low skilled work. No point letting British people get used to working in jobs that will be the first to disappear. Better off training them for the mid-skilled roles that will become the lowest rung on the ladder when the singularity arrives automation gets really widespread.

But the whole worry about automation is that this link breaks down. And its also not necessarily proportionate, or else all countries would have identical unemployment rates.

 

[EwanI Ted]

But the whole worry about automation is that this link breaks down. And its also not necessarily proportionate, or else all countries would have identical unemployment rates.

Not sure I follow. I mean proportionate rather than a fixed value.

 

[2mufc0]

Atleast they won't have immigrants to blame after this .

 

[Adisa]

Tweet

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Atleast they won't have immigrants to blame afte this .

Want a bet?

 

[2mufc0]

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Want a bet?

She's a witch. Talk about pulling up the ladder behind you.