Who Will Pick The Strawberries

[Self Employed Youth]

Go on then a challenge you to do the calculations I bet you couldn't feed clothe and house yourself picking potatoes.

In the "potato famine", many Irishmen who were agricultural workers on potato wages couldn't afford to buy potatoes.

Due to potato blight, the price of potatoes had risen. So the agricultural workers on potato wages literally starved to death by the roads. As trucks carrying meat, butter and cheese passed them on the way to the ports for the export market.

Whist Irish men (of the lower non land owning classes) were dying of starvation, the country continued to be a NET export of food, primarily; butter, meat and cheese.

[alexw]

there's a farmer near me who laid off a local guy who's been with them for 10 years or more, but has still kept all the europeans workers on (obviously). Quite a few live in caravans around the back of the farm.

And you can see why he was laid off. Hire latvian's, pay them NMW, then charge them 1/3 of that for caravan 'rent'.

[Gone baby gone]

OK, a long time ago, but I it was actually piece work and I made around 1 pound per hour. Adjusted for inflation I think that's probably a little less than minimum wage now.

Your starter for 10.

Which of lifes essentials soared in price over the last 13 years, but was mysteriously removed from the inflation indices....

I'm prepared to give you a clue, it's not food or warmth.

[alexw]

OK, a long time ago, but I it was actually piece work and I made around 1 pound per hour. Adjusted for inflation I think that's probably a little less than minimum wage now.

You mean RPI inflation. How is it adjusted for the inflation someone on around minimum wage would actually feel?

Edited February 15, 2013 by alexw

[OnlyMe]

Did a lot fo fruit picking in late 80's. Very good pocket money on the whole. Very dependent on the quality of the crop - best strawberry crops could give around £6 an hour piece rate going at a fair pace. Worst was on a lettuce farm - £100 for the week.

[chronyx]

Who Will Pick The Strawberries

No one. Strawberry fields forever.

[OnlyMe]

Is that how you got your hat?

Could be ;-).

Must did up somf of the old farming threads, ag land prices apparently just hit a new peak. I bet in response productivity and output are falling.

[LiveinHope]

Go on then a challenge you to do the calculations I bet you couldn't feed clothe and house yourself picking potatoes.

If I was unemployed and needed to earn

and if I could get the work and there was some overtime, I reckon I could exist even at the lower rates. Would need just under £1k a month after tax.

Pay rates

It's a world away from what I do now, but having done it for a couple of years, albeit a long time ago, I know my way around the work - tractor cabs have changed quite a bit though.

Hard work, long hours, but you're out in the fresh air.

In fact I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now if I hadn't got the sack from farm work because, as the farmers wife said "We're not in the habit of employing people with 1st class degrees" - their existing farmworker who had been with them 5 years by then also had a 1st.

Edited February 15, 2013 by LiveinHope

[bigkid]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9872901/Bulgarians-and-Romanians-will-reject-hard-work.html

Strawberry picking was one of the jobs I used to do when I was a teenager and, from what I recall, most of the other pickers were students and schoolkids with a few older people thrown in. It wasn't the best farm work for sure, but it wasn't that bad and certainly beat some of the other stuff on offer. Why has it suddenly become so hard to find people to pick fruit?

Because benefits for doing nothing are higher.

[justthisbloke]

And you can see why he was laid off. Hire latvian's, pay them NMW, then charge them 1/3 of that for caravan 'rent'.

Not legal. You can only make small deductions (specified in law) to cover employer provided services such as food, transport and accommodation.

[OnlyMe]

Because benefits for doing nothing are higher.

In the area I lived I reckon around half the summer fruit/veg farm labour were school age. You have farms with 100% migrant labour cams because they want it that way and it suits them. Now I doubt anybody will go back to the way it was, they have effectively detached themselves form the local labour pool.

[justthisbloke]

I remember lots of jobs for school age kids as well.

My worst agricultural job was turkey plucking in an artisan farm (as they'd call it these days). Killing and plucking by hand - it was murder.

[Mickey]

When I was a kid in the 1970s we used to stay with my Grandparents for 2 weeks every summer in rural worcestershire. The local farmer grew gooseberries over 2 fields which were picked in August. Every year the whole village pitched in over a single weekend to do the harvest (farmer included). I helped a couple of times myself. It was hard work but no actual cash changed hands. It was a community occasion with a lot of chatting and laughing, a picnic provided by the farmer and a few punnets of free gooseberries thrown in.

I am not suggesting this as a model for any modern business but this is how it must have been for many many years.

[alexw]

Not legal. You can only make small deductions (specified in law) to cover employer provided services such as food, transport and accommodation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-scandal-of-britains-fruitfarm-workers-1740207.html

"The workers are officially paid the minimum wage of £5.74, a comparatively high sum for foreign nationals who often have an average annual income of less than £3,000 in their own countries. But employee pay slips obtained by The Independent show that the real hourly rate for the company's fruit pickers often amounts to less than half the minimum wage once a series of obligatory charges has been deducted."

[RufflesTheGuineaPig]

Your starter for 10.

Which of lifes essentials soared in price over the last 13 years, but was mysteriously removed from the inflation indices....

I'm prepared to give you a clue, it's not food or warmth.

Petrol?

And you can see why he was laid off. Hire latvian's, pay them NMW, then charge them 1/3 of that for caravan 'rent'.

Not legal. You can only make small deductions (specified in law) to cover employer provided services such as food, transport and accommodation.

Assuming they are declaring their income. And you aren't paying them "at home". If you pay them in Latvia you can pay them what you like.

I remember lots of jobs for school age kids as well.

My worst agricultural job was turkey plucking in an artisan farm (as they'd call it these days). Killing and plucking by hand - it was murder.

Tasty, tasty murder.

When I was a kid in the 1970s we used to stay with my Grandparents for 2 weeks every summer in rural worcestershire. The local farmer grew gooseberries over 2 fields which were picked in August. Every year the whole village pitched in over a single weekend to do the harvest (farmer included). I helped a couple of times myself. It was hard work but no actual cash changed hands. It was a community occasion with a lot of chatting and laughing, a picnic provided by the farmer and a few punnets of free gooseberries thrown in.

I am not suggesting this as a model for any modern business but this is how it must have been for many many years.

Much of my family are from Somerset.

When I was young (am only 35) it was normal during peak periods for kids to take a week or 2 off school to help with the harvest. It was just accepted and most people saw it as a good way to get the kids used to the idea of work. It was... efficient.

[Guest TheBlueCat]

You mean RPI inflation. How is it adjusted for the inflation someone on around minimum wage would actually feel?

Actually, I'm thinking pint of beer inflation. Shortly after doing the strawberry picking I went off to uni and a pint was around 1 pound in the student union at the time. Obviously it's a lot more now. Housing on the other hand has gone up by a somewhat bigger factor although by much less in the rural area I grew up in than in, say, the south east.

[Kurt Barlow]

There are places that advertise as working holidays in other countries, gives young fit people the chance to visit new lands for little cost and earn their keep.....bit like people here used to visit a kibbutz or travel to the USA or Australia to work learn and have an adventure.

Yes but those places always seem to be that much more exotic than a residential caravan park 5 miles outside of Wisbech