So what’s so wrong with labour shortages driving up low wages?

[BobKowalski]

Nothing. Providing you have the labour pool to fill the vacancies. We don't. Same is true of all developed countries.

Issuing temporary visas for EU workers to do the driving, the meatpacking and all the other stuff on which our supply chains rest is unlikely to attract the numbers because the pattern of migration from Eastern Europe has changed. Countries like Romania are increasing non EU migrant quotas because there isn't enough workforce. The more developed countries suck in the labour, then the less developed grow and migration changes. The EU will likely expand and the cycle continues. The US does the same by sucking in labour from Central America.

The UK model rested on being connected to Europe wide supply chains and mobility of labour. Two things then happened. Covid, which tested the supply chains, and Brexit which broke them. Did we make provision for this? No. Are we prepared to pay much higher prices for food and goods? Doubtful, after all Brexit was all about having cheaper food and goods. It was meant to be a land awash with milk and honey, not one where milkshakes ran out.

Anyway, we either pay a lot more for stuff and accept that the domestic workforce will have to do a lot of jobs it was sniffy about previously - and not just because of the wages, or we go back to importing labour to do the work, something we have been doing since the dawn of time.

Choose one, not arsed which one it is, but I would advise making our minds up quickly.

 

[patrickkinney]

More on this topic:

Left can't stand workers getting paid more as it shows Brexit working

DISDAIN for manual labour has long been a hallmark of our class-based society. In sophisticated circles, a university degree seems to count for more than a practical skill.

www.express.co.uk

"Our pay structures are riddled with perverse snobbery and warped priorities that bear no relation to the real needs of Britain. Those whose work should be cherished often receive dire financial rewards, while some of our biggest earners make little genuine contribution to our country. Only a system that has lost its moral compass would pay social care workers a small fraction of the vast salaries received by the highest ranks of pen-pushing, jargon-spouting officialdom.

But there are now welcome signs that this inverted culture may be starting to crumble. Economic necessity is finally bringing greater justice to the earnings of hard-working professionals."

 

[west didsblue]

More on this topic:

Left can't stand workers getting paid more as it shows Brexit working

DISDAIN for manual labour has long been a hallmark of our class-based society. In sophisticated circles, a university degree seems to count for more than a practical skill.

www.express.co.uk

"Our pay structures are riddled with perverse snobbery and warped priorities that bear no relation to the real needs of Britain. Those whose work should be cherished often receive dire financial rewards, while some of our biggest earners make little genuine contribution to our country. Only a system that has lost its moral compass would pay social care workers a small fraction of the vast salaries received by the highest ranks of pen-pushing, jargon-spouting officialdom.

But there are now welcome signs that this inverted culture may be starting to crumble. Economic necessity is finally bringing greater justice to the earnings of hard-working professionals."

Only the Express could blame an imaginary “lefty elite” for low pay for essential workers rather than the government that’s been in power for eleven years.

 

[manchester blue]

It depends on the sector. If it's relatively low-skilled jobs, then I have little sympathy with people offering £3 a hour and them moaning that they can't find anyone to take the job. Although it's worth mentioning that it will make things more expensive to buy (if you've ever been to Japan where they have very few immigrants and seen the price of things like fruit, it's ridiculous). But obviously there are certain sectors where there's a bit more training required, so if you instantly take away thousands of migrant workers it takes time to train new people to do the jobs (although it's not like employers had no warning).

But even in training, that's highlighted a big problem of relying on immigration to fill jobs. When did it stop being the employer's responsibility to train staff to do the job? We seem to have created this situation where people are always individually responsible for their own training and when a haulage company says "There aren't any trained HGV drivers." it doesn't enter their mind for a second to pay the £2000 training costs to encourage people to enter the industry. In skilled industries, immigrants become the easy option. Why train more British people as doctors at huge cost when you can just pop over to India and pluck them off the shelf?

Having said that, I think the wider economic arguments are generally in favour of immigration benefiting the country as a whole and in the longer term, improving standards of living for everyone. It's certainly not immigrants who have created the mess of the last 10 years.

But yeah, the article in many ways is like the ones about house prices, where middle-class middle-aged journalists in London warn about how something-or-other is going to affect house prices, and everyone under the age of about 35 thinks "good!"

Had this very same conversation with my mates the other night and to add also said that we have scored can own goal with the lack of apprenticeships over the last twenty years. Companies with so many employees should be mandated to provide them. British Gas have vacancies for engineers right across the country and cannot fill them but they have only themselves to blame due to lack of foresight. It's been cheaper to employ migrants than to train people.

 

[andyhinch]

Had this very same conversation with my mates the other night and to add also said that we have scored can own goal with the lack of apprenticeships over the last twenty years. Companies with so many employees should be mandated to provide them. British Gas have vacancies for engineers right across the country and cannot fill them but they have only themselves to blame due to lack of foresight. It's been cheaper to employ migrants than to train people.

British Gas should possibly have thought twice before they introduced a fire and re-hire policy, just a thought.

 

[manchester blue]

British Gas should possibly have thought twice before they introduced a fire and re-hire policy, just a thought.

True but lack of engineers predates this policy. That has just exacerbated it.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

Here in Lincolnshire there is a problem. Many immigrants have gone but we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. One could argue that those out of work at present are unemployable for some reason. How do you fill the gaps in the food production sector (and I include drivers) when there is literally no one available? Will people want to come from areas of higher unemployment to do these jobs even if you increase wages?

 

[andyhinch]

True but lack of engineers predates this policy. That has just exacerbated it.

Your first sentence is true for a lot of companies unfortunately.

 

[mat]

No one are increasing their wages though.

I'm getting sick to fuck of hospitality bosses and other management sectors appearing on TV complaining they don't have enough staff and then giving bullshit reasons why they aren't prepared to raise their wages from the mandatory minimum wage (or less when using EU workers in some cases).

 

[mat]

More on this topic:

Left can't stand workers getting paid more as it shows Brexit working

DISDAIN for manual labour has long been a hallmark of our class-based society. In sophisticated circles, a university degree seems to count for more than a practical skill.

www.express.co.uk

"Our pay structures are riddled with perverse snobbery and warped priorities that bear no relation to the real needs of Britain. Those whose work should be cherished often receive dire financial rewards, while some of our biggest earners make little genuine contribution to our country. Only a system that has lost its moral compass would pay social care workers a small fraction of the vast salaries received by the highest ranks of pen-pushing, jargon-spouting officialdom.

But there are now welcome signs that this inverted culture may be starting to crumble. Economic necessity is finally bringing greater justice to the earnings of hard-working professionals."

That's a very "lefty" statement for the Express. Does the article contradict itself? I won't click on the link because I don't want to give that shower of shit any money.