Plavt wrote:Ksl,
I would need to look harder but I suspect that article would seem at best misleading, I doubt very much if the pay is seven pounds an hour since the reason farmers employ foreign labour is to keep their costs down and £7 an hour is not that common since most supermarkets and security jobs here pay around £6.52 per hour and that's in London where rates are usually higher. The only way the immigrants on those farms can net 25K is if they are working somewhere around 12 hours day which some of course are.
Overall the article looks like yet another attack on the unemployed giving the impression that they are lazy spongers getting such a good deal from state benefits they need not find a job. This is of course total crap and nothing could be further from the truth! Way too many companies in keeping with their greed have routed jobs to India, South Africa and The Philippines leaving a short fall in available menial or semi-skilled jobs.
The result is there are many professional jobs here that are difficult to fill on the other end of the scale employers do not want to employ UK citizens they look for foreigners who work for below a viable wage. There are quite a few earning only 12k here in London which is inadequate.
The reason foreigners survive is they live in conditions which native English would not except such as three people in a one-bedroomed flat. Some ethnic communities have stores and warehouses which cater to their own people. For example I found a local Nigerian supermarket selling cat-fish the size of which I couldn't believe and many other products at a lower than average price.
Yes, I do agree with you Plavt, to get that kind of money in farm work, you would have to work 12 hrs a day 6 days a week....and I do know that English employers are also exploiting the foreigners, in many cases by not paying the minimum rate.
An example is from my sisters man, was the manager for over 25 years of a scrap tire busness...even he had to work, alternate saturdays, without pay...as a manager all that time, his net income was only 250 a week....the company promised him a world cruise for his 25th year, but he recieved a bunch of flowers only.....He decided, to retire, on the grounds he was pissed off, with being the only one working on the street, and he couldn't even afford a new car...yet all the neighbours, were driving round in disabled lease cars.
Out of the workforce of 15 British, there are now only the bosses sons, the rest are all polish or from eastern europe, he did say they work longer hours and the bosses do not pay them the legal rates, many of them don't speak English.
He was really down, after working all those years, he started the same time as the owner, and made him super rich, he also taught his sons, the business too, and they took over the business....after all that time, on 25k a year, for working 180 hrs a month, was a kick in the teeth.
He's been stopped work since December now....and spends the time just touring on his motorcycle...after i told him, I thought he was a mug for putting up with it. Many employers in UK will abuse employees, if they can get away with it.
When i was sub contracting, i also had my problems getting money, you live and learn, the hard way, and when promises are not upheld, you have to move on, not put up with it.
Ethics and good characters are not easy to find, so when you do find, these qualities in people, you can really appreaciate, the long term connections, one builds up, these are what i also percieve has good friendships, and one doesn't mind helping out, in hard times, one goes to work to work, and if one is producing the benefits and rewards, are normally past on too, to good employees. Like SMS says, you pay them peanuts you get monkeys.
My main point of the link, was to basically compare the youth of today, not just in UK, but also here, the spirit of work, is missing, they just want a job, and not produce, they just want to be carried, by workers that do work hard, it's not new, it's always been like it, but there is nothing worse, than working with someone, that doesn't pull their weight.
I reflect back on my own times, when i needed to find any job, because i needed money, I think i have only ever had dole twice in UK, back when i was 17 before going in the army, it cannot be much...45 a week maybe. But I also notice when i am over there, in UK that really many people smoke dope, because alcohol is expensive...and they really don't understand, how hash, in many ways, has a negative influence over attitude.
I think there is a very big difference in attitudes today, not only to work, but also respect for elders, neighbours, and police than in my day.
Our government over the years, has destroyed the Country, and our now hell bent on Americanising it, I have nothing against that either, only the fact, that social welfare is pushed out, and crime will rise, because of change...I don't see the people that have paid there taxes all their lives, getting much out of it, even the pension system is a big joke.
So it is survival of the fittest in a very conservative Country, which has always been conservative, in camouflage of being social labour, I just don't have respect for the politics and never have had in my life time.
Everything in UK is done deliberately against the British people and it's always been that way, another 50 years, and the Country will be a new breed of foreigners, more disloyal, than they are today.
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