Brexit Thread IX - Voters' Remorse

[EnglishEdward]

And none of them are likely to be taken up by someone on 3-month visum I suspect, unless you pay excessive salaries.

I can not see many HGV divers being attracted to the UK by a three months visa,
particularly as we understand that there are plenty of HGV vacancies in the EU..

But fruit picking and packing turkeys are seasonal jobs and people having been
coming to the UK for three months for this work and then returning home.

Presumably before the prospect of living in the UK was what motivated these people.

I don't think so.

Living in the UK was merely what they had to put with to get a job that paid more than at home in their member state.

Although some may have enjoyed the opportunity to get away from home as a break from claustrophobic family life.

In general, people in the UK are neither hostile nor welcoming, merely indifferent,
and generally dis-interested if the migrant has little or poor English.

 

[Snowygerry]

I was thinking more of the other job categories in the link above - teachers, nurses, jobs in bars restaurants etc.

Those normally attract people looking for semi-permanent residence, I suspect...

 

[EnglishEdward]

I believe that the UK is offering longer term visas for foreign language teachers and trained and qualified nurses.

However unlike the indefinite right to stay for pre-existing residents from the EU, there is a significant visa fee.

As for jobs in bars and restaurants, there are plenty of school leavers and discouraged workers.

 

[Gorbles]

(a) Brexit will mean both a loss of jobs

AND

(b) Brexit will mean there are not enough people to do the work

are in general, for most sectors, contradictory.

"jobs" are not one gigantic pool from which a number can be added or subtracted.

We will lose specific jobs, in specific industries, and we will also not have the people to do other jobs, in other industries - would be a more accurate way of phrasing it.

As for jobs in bars and restaurants, there are plenty of school leavers and discouraged workers.

Are you of the opinion that working such jobs requires no training? Hiring students might be a popular tactic for franchised pubs, for example, but as someone with family in the restaurant scene (literally), that only goes so far in terms of filling gaps in your staff.

 

[Snowygerry]

That may another aspect yes, working inside the EU carries with it certain rights, in the UK that's no longer the case -

you're at the mercy of a government that has shown itself to be very unreliable.

 

[Reconciliator]

As for jobs in bars and restaurants, there are plenty of school leavers and discouraged workers.

Pulling a pint is one thing, but you have got to accept there is a massive drain in service and efficiency if everything is staffed with newbies and not veterans? Quickly everything becomes a roll of the dice if the business can survive at all with slow and inept workers at the helm.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

It appears Brexit was even less to blame for the driver shortage than thought. ONS figures just out show that 81% of the reduction was from British drivers and just 19% from EU citizens. Proportionately similar.
(In 2016, EU drivers accounted for 37,000, or just 11 per cent, of the 321,000 lorry drivers in the UK. By 2021 that had marginally decreased to 10 per cent, with them now making 28,000 of the total 275,000 drivers.)

But, blaming Brexit is surely wrong anyway, IMO. Arguably, the real problem has been not so much the leaving of the EU as our actual membership of it for so many years. If we had left at the time of the Lisbon Treaty (which we would have done if we had had a vote) then we would not have such a difficult situation now.

The RHA was asked by a government minister in 2016 why only 1% of drivers were women, why only 2% of drivers were under 25 and why the average age was 55.
The honest answer would have been: Why should we invest in new drivers when we can just get hold of cheap-as-chips Eastern Europeans who not only do the work cheaply, but also help to keep the locals on low wages as well.

If we had left in 2007 before the influx of Eastern Europeans we would have a much better paid and more stable work force now, better able to cope with situations like this. It would have meant some things here costing more, but why should British truckers pay for that?

From the Telegraph:

Fewer than 10,000 European lorry drivers left the UK workforce after Brexit, official statistics have revealed, despite claims Brexit is to blame for the crisis.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that only one in five drivers to have left the profession since the referendum were EU nationals.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that the haulage industry was warned as far back as 2016 that it faced a shortage of as many as 100,000 drivers as it struggled to attract new truckers to replace those retiring or leaving the industry.

It comes as Michel Barnier, the former EU chief negotiator, and the Labour Party have this week sought to pin the crisis on Brexit, arguing that there is a “clear link” between the driver shortage and the UK’s decision to leave the bloc.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...dustry-not-brexit-fuel-shortage-says-tory-mp/

 

[Snowygerry]

(...)
If we had left in 2007 before the influx of Eastern Europeans we would have a much better paid and more stable work force now, better able to cope with situations like this. It would have meant some things here costing more, but why should British truckers pay for that?

Should have left in 2000 - then the EU wouldn't have expanded East like it did

 

[EnglishEdward]

Are you of the opinion that working such jobs requires no training?

No, but most require very little training, and people can re-train.

Pulling a pint is one thing, but you have got to accept there is a massive drain in service and efficiency if everything is staffed with newbies and not veterans? Quickly everything becomes a roll of the dice if the business can survive at all with slow and inept workers at the helm.

Veterans retire and get replaced by newbies. That is called staff turnover. It happens in all industries anyway, whether in the EU or not.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Should have left in 2000 - then the EU wouldn't have expanded East like it did

There should have been a UK referendum before the UK joined the EU.

UK would almost certainly have voted not to join.

And none of the anguish, costs, disruption, distraction etc. etc. from leaving the EU would have occurred.

 

[Gorbles]

No, but most require very little training, and people can re-train.

Sorry, but you're incorrect that it requires "very little training". People can re-train, and this will take time commensurate to the seniority of the position and the responsibilities it holds. Training an entry-level waiter, or kitchen porter, is far different from training a head waiter or second chef (or even a head chef). A lot of senior people in the restaurant business (that aren't in management) are people who have been chefs for years (the same goes for waiters, too).

Much like various skilled professions, there is high turnover at the lower end, where experience is limited and people are either just working it for a job (which I'm not criticising), or because they don't know what they're doing long-term yet. However replacing veterans is to replace, in large part, lived experience, which is understandably more difficult.

And none of the anguish, costs, disruption, distraction etc. etc. from leaving the EU would have occurred.

And none of the benefits from being in it, while we were

 

[Reconciliator]

Fewer than 10,000 European lorry drivers left the UK workforce after Brexit, official statistics have revealed, despite claims Brexit is to blame for the crisis.

Could sure do with those 10,000 right now though!

 

[EnglishEdward]

...commensurate to the seniority of the position .....

Blimey... that is the I have been here longer than you and should therefore be paid more, deferred to and respected line.

The time required for essential training; e.g. HSE how not to poison guest, and retaining customers is in weeks,
not the years required for training a brain surgeon.

And none of the benefits from being in it, while we were

What benefits?

 

[Arakhor]

If we had left in 2007 before the influx of Eastern Europeans we would have a much better paid and more stable work force now, better able to cope with situations like this. It would have meant some things here costing more, but why should British truckers pay for that?

Are you seriously blaming the gig industry on the EU? Even without European workers, capitalism would have found to exploit the workforce and keep wages low.

 

[Gorbles]

Blimey... that is the I have been here longer than you and should therefore be paid more, deferred to and respected line.

The time required for essential training; e.g. HSE how not to poison guest, and retaining customers is in weeks,
not the years required for training a brain surgeon.

It almost seems like you're trying to deliberately misunderstand me

There are bad chefs that are in their 50s and 60s, I'm sure. But the fact of the matter is it's not a theoretical profession. You have to actually do it, practise it, refine it. It's a very physical job (moreso for a chef than a waiter, naturally). As such, it's not training in the way my job (for example) requires training. I'm a software developer. There are plenty of guides on how to read an API, consume its response, and render it in a variety of software frameworks.

I can show someone how to do that very simply, in a lot of cases. I can't show someone how to skin potatoes at the speed required at peak time in a restaurant. Heck, I still can't. I suck at chopping fast, skinning thing fast - prep stuff. And I had a few years experience! It's something that requires constant practise to keep the skills sharp.

Conversely, my job, a lot of the training was up front. I learned programming. I learned software frameworks. What has developed as I've gotten older is my ability to read languages I'm not familiar with. To make better educated guesses. To learn new thing faster, because I understand the fundamentals that they're based on. I've recently had to pick (back) up technologies I haven't used in about six years. It took me less than a week to get comfortable. Far faster than training a new hire. But a new hire could get by if shown the exact steps to do the processes we needed doing (that required me to get stuck back into something I stopped doing those years back).

Meanwhile, my dad literally runs a restaurant, and has been a chef (in total, from beginner to where he is now) for . . . four decades? Nearly, anyway. And even though he's decades older than me, and we both know how to chop an onion, he could do six in the time I can do one. With the same tools. That's what I mean by experience. Not that he's better just because he's older than me. But he's better because he's been refining those skills for longer than I've been alive. He understands what his body is capable of, what techniques work for him, what don't.

It seems to me that you simply don't value the skills required for the profession(s) being discussed. Or you made an awkward, early judgement on the training required and now for some reason are sticking with it, instead of admitting the judgement was a bit rash. Or maybe there's another reason - those are just the ones that have occurred to me.

What benefits?

Don't be coy. You didn't have to qualify your statement, I'm fully allowed to let mine stand. If it's something at this late stage in the process that you actually want to read more about, there's plenty a Google search away.

 

[really]

Just counting drivers ignores things like cabotage, trucks and drivers delivering stuff to the UK, picking up and dropping off extra loads before returning to the EU.
They broadly aren't coming putting greater strain on the domestic drivers. (To collect/deliver the goods from the port and do the extra pickups, spending more time on paperwork)

It's hard to explain say petrol panic in England, Scotland and Wales, but not in Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Belguim, Netherlands, Germany, USA etc without Brexit.

 

[Reconciliator]

cabotage

New word for me, thank you!

 

[EnglishEdward]

It's hard to explain say petrol panic in England, Scotland and Wales, but not in Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Belguim, Netherlands, Germany, USA etc without Brexit.

Amongst other things as furlough payments end this Tuesday, many extra drivers wanted to top up their cars to go to work.

 

[Samson]

What benefits?

OU says:

• UK in a Changing Europe: EU membership so far has made the UK’s economy more open and bigger
  
• Bank of England: EU membership has seen increased openness to flows of trade, investment and labour. (helps economic growth and improves living standards, although UK more exposed to economic and financial shocks from overseas).
  
• Nick Crafts: past EU membership has increased UK productivity – and so GDP – by about 10%.

The indescribably boring adds:

• Your holiday is much easier - and safer
• It means you're less likely to get ripped off
• It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime
• We have greater influence
• It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe

My personal experience says that we gained a lot from being included in EU wide research efforts. This is not principally money, it is colaboration that is so important in science. I have seen many groups excluded from some productive work 'cos they were from outside the EU (Switzerland frequently).

 

[really]

Amongst other things as furlough payments end this Tuesday, many extra drivers wanted to top up their cars to go to work.

Again was this replicated anywhere else?
Furlough and covid aren't unique to GB.
Why didn't it happen in NI?