meic wrote:Vorpal wrote:meic wrote:It isnt that they dont want to do the job, it is that they think it is worth more in return for their labour than they are being offered.
That depends on the job. In the case of some jobs--picking soft fruit is a good example; it's hard, back-breaking labour, paid by quantity--British people mostly don't want to do it. Not enough to get the crops in, anyway. Some students will do it, and a few other people who are able to do that sort of work, and need the money, but not int he quantoty of people needed to get a harvest in.
We might be able to manage to get British workers to do that if seasonal labourers were paid an annual living wage for seasonal work. If, for example, they were paid £20 000 per year, and in exchange, worked very hard for some months during the year (planting, then May - September?), but farmers likely couldn't afford that, and food would become rather more expensive. It could well become cheaper to buy Strawberries flown from Morrocco, than those raised in Essex.
The piece rate is too low, it is just another way of having low wages.
I have done those jobs (as an immigrant labourer undercutting the locals) and it is possible for experienced skilled workers to make decent money on the piece rates and that is used to justify a piece rate that means most ordinary people, trying hard, can not make MINIMUM wage.
When you see some of the weekly incomes that these good pickers get, they will have worked a solid 12 hours for seven days to earn that. When I did it, it was on a self-employed basis with none of the other benefits like breaks, sick pay, holiday pay, pension etc.
Completely off topic, but something that amuses me. My student daughter earns money by being an extra in TV productions. Yesterday she earned about £140 for walking around in the background during shots for a Welsh language production. Then as she was about to go home she got an urgent call to go to another studio where a TV drama is in production and she earned a further £170 for two and a half hours of strolling around in a costume. A nice little earner, but not regular.