"We advertised locally for 70 fruit-pickers and we had nine applications. On follow-up, only one was still available... in terms of recruiting locally, we failed completely," says Ali Capper, the owner of Stocks Farm in Suckley and chair of British Apples and Pears.
At her orchard, harvest has just started. It must be done quickly and requires many pairs of hands.
Ali had to turn to specialist recruitment firms and has brought in seasonal workers from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia.
What's a reasonable prediction here? Higher wages and more expensive fruits? A bunch of farms going bust?
I love how all the elite arguments that immigration doesn't reduce wages (which the working class always thought were complete bullshit) were proved to be complete bullshit during the pandemic-related border closures.
Of course, the discussion about what to do about that remains - open borders & keep wages low, or close borders & raise local wages, or close borders & keep wages low & invest in automation - but it's nice to have the discussion honestly, without gaslighting the opposition.
Pretty big red flag was why so many multinational corporations are pro open borders. Corporations rarely take a stance on political issues unless they have a reason to do so.
In the US there is a particularly pro big business conservative wing of the right that is hyper in favor of unlimited low skill immigration. It's totally at odds with the mainstream conservative position on immigration. So why do they hold that position? It's not out of the kindness of their gentle pro-immigration conservative hearts of course. It's because they want the cheap labor to feed to big business and it helps to suppress wages for all the rest of their workers.
If you go back just 15-20 years ago, the Democrats universally understood this fact of labor supply/demand. Large amounts of low skill labor hurt their middle class and lower class labor voters, hurt their wages. And the Democrats used to be against such vast low skill immigration, because they had a large labor vote to protect. You can see this in action by looking at speeches from decades past (including by still prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders). Their position now? Crickets. They've gone radio silent on the matter vs a few decades ago. That specific labor vote is no longer what they view to be the future, how they are plotting political dominance for the next 50 years.
The more you think about it the worse it gets. It's one thing to be in favor of immigration, it's another thing entirely to be in favor of illegal immigration. The Tyson Chickens of the world love illegal immigrants, they don't file workers comp claims or take you to court if you fail to pay them. Supporting illegal immigration is supporting the creation of a untouchable quasi-slave caste. If immigrants had the same rights, privileges and responsibilities of domestic workers, they probably wouldn't work for such a steep discount. This is why I believe many proported immigration proponents don't ever seem to manage to meaningfully open up the border, that isn't what they are going for.
That's certainly right. One of the big lies in the US today about illegal immigration is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. That has been the same number touted for most of two decades (it's still mindlessly repeated by talking heads on TV).
The real number is now closer to 22 million illegal immigrants, according to a recent Yale study [1]. Representing around 6% of all people in the US. So wait, how are all of those people surviving? They're cheap labor for the big business machine, they're an unprotected cheap labor caste as you correctly point out. They can't complain, they don't have well protected worker rights, and it can take a long time to become a citizen. It's a human rights travesty, and both the big business conservatives and the Democrats (as both are pro open borders) are morally culpable for it.
The rational approach for the US would be to remodel its immigration system as something similar to Canada, focused more on high skill labor. We need to turn off the flood of illegal immigration while simultaneously creating a reasonable citizenship pathway for the 22 million illegal immigrants that are here now (most are never leaving, so the proper thing to do is to provide a citizenship pathway), which would also begin bringing them into the tax base and protecting them as workers.
Or simply relax immigration policies to basically let migrants get work permits, they would argue for a fair wage, and we can let the market decide. From what history says, that's what the US used to be in previous centuries. People came and worked, and grew and made what the US had become before politicians decided to make it harder and harder for migrants to settle legally.
> (including by still prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders)
Bernie only changed his tune after Trump got elected. FWIW, it's always been obvious that more immigration reduces wages for low-skill workers (and everyone I suppose, depending on the volume of immigration). I was always really confused that this was not common knowledge.
Like, Ross Perot ran against Clinton/Bush 1 on pretty much this platform, and that was in the 90's.
There’s no opposition to gaslight, the vast majority of the population believes the myth of immigration reducing wages, while there’s no evidence of it being true (you are welcome to provide some). This vast majority is not the opposition, but the force that elected the past 3-4 conservative and euro-skeptic governments that gave us the “hostile environment for foreigners”.
In the UK, EU nationals earn more than the locals, so one inclined to silly socio-economic statements should argue that locals reduce wages.
The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad".
A lot of EU immigrants come to London to work in tech/finance because they offer higher wages than pretty much anywhere on the continent (I was one of them). But the working class is pretty far removed from the effect of professional-class immigration.
The UK has many other structural problems so collapsing the whole Brexit discussion into one dimension is a bit of an over-simplification, though if you asked me to do the PCA, I'd say the main cause was "protest vote". (Pre-BJ governments weren't Euro-sceptic.)
> The proof is in the pudding: "we can't find local workers willing to work for these low wages so we'll import them from abroad".
Everywhere in world there are labour shortages, because we just ended lockdowns 3 months ago. In other places they are blaming the shortage on the young being lazy or on unemployment benefits, with the same scientific rigour. So I’m still waiting for a proof (not a pun or an anecdote) that immigration reduces salaries.
> A lot of EU immigrants come to London to work in tech/finance because they offer higher wages than pretty much anywhere on the continent (I was one of them).
Which means that EU nationals living in the UK earn more than the locals, so they can’t be driving salaries down. Unless you hypothesise a fantasy counterfactual where Jack deChav, who’s now an underpaid bartender, would have become a software developer and would be earning 6 digits if only Carlos de Perros, S/W developer from Malaga, didn’t steal his job.
> But the working class is pretty far removed from the effect of professional-class immigration.
Whatever the working class is in the UK, if they believe that immigration reduces salaries, they are far removed from any modern notion of truth.
> The UK has many other structural problems so collapsing the whole Brexit discussion into one dimension is a bit of an over-simplification, though if you asked me to do the PCA, I'd say the main cause was "protest vote". (Pre-BJ governments weren't Euro-sceptic.)
I’m not collapsing anything into anything. I’ve read a false statement “immigration reduces salaries” and I replied to it. Incidentally the UK has been playing with “hostile environments”, euro-skepticism and Brexit and yet real salaries are still below 2008.
>So I’m still waiting for a proof (not a pun or an anecdote) that immigration reduces salaries.
And what would that be? A study linking both while accounting for every other factor? I don't think it's even possible to do such a thing.
>Which means that EU nationals living in the UK earn more than the locals, so they can’t be driving salaries down. Unless you hypothesise a fantasy counterfactual where Jack deChav, who’s now an underpaid bartender, would have become a software developer and would be earning 6 digits if only Carlos de Perros, S/W developer from Malaga, didn’t steal his job.
There is competition even in software development, it doesn't take anyone to be a bartender for competition to cause a wage drop, moreover the reality is way more stark when you look at jobs that aren't as cushy as software development. A Spanish waiter is probably used to lower salaries and is probably more dependent on his job than an English one that has a support network in his country, his chances to unionize are also lower. We see it all the time with immigrants from low income countries.
I can imagine how immigration can lead to economic growth and salary growth as a result, but I find it impossible that the race to the bottom caused in low-income jobs is worth for them at all, if anything the economic growth is caused by this low-cost labor.
> And what would that be? A study linking both while accounting for every other factor? I don't think it's even possible to do such a thing.
What’s the point of saying something if you think that it’s impossible to prove?
> There is competition even in software development, it doesn't take anyone to be a bartender for competition to cause a wage drop, moreover the reality is way more stark when you look at jobs that aren't as cushy as software development. A Spanish waiter is probably used to lower salaries and is probably more dependent on his job than an English one that has a support network in his country, his chances to unionize are also lower. We see it all the time with immigrants from low income countries.
The number of software developers in the UK kept going up until the beginning of lockdowns, but salaries went up instead of going down. How’s that possible if more people mean lower wages?
Is there any evidence of Spanish bartenders pushing bartender salaries down?
> I can imagine how immigration can lead to economic growth and salary growth as a result, but I find it impossible that the race to the bottom caused in low-income jobs is worth for them at all, if anything the economic growth is caused by this low-cost labor.
Is there any evidence of this “race to the bottom [..] in low-income jobs”? Is there any evidence of it being caused by immigration?
Sorry, I don't agree. If the supply of labour increases without any consequent increase in demand, then one would expect to see the price of labour reduce, right?
That's what econ 101 would say, right? You're the one making the claim that it doesn't. If such a claim is self evident, then you should be able to produce some kind of reasoning as to why it is so, no?
> Sorry, I don't agree. If the supply of labour increases without any consequent increase in demand, then one would expect to see the price of labour reduce, right?
Which is only true if the foreigner in question teleports themself to their country of origin whenever they are not working. Even if they got all their food delivered from Poorland, there would be an increased demand for deliveries.
> That's what econ 101 would say, right? You're the one making the claim that it doesn't. If such a claim is self evident, then you should be able to produce some kind of reasoning as to why it is so, no?
No, unless we assume that workers don't consume anything and are perfect substitutes, if there is perfect information in the labour market, etc...
None of these assumptions holds true, so the impact of immigration on wages can't be estimated like the impact of potato overproduction on the potato market. So it becomes an empirical question, and evidence suggests that no country experienced long term wage compression because of immigration.
I meant that the vast majority of Britons (and of Westerns) believe that immigration has a negative effect on wages, which is a false credence. They haven’t all voted for the Conservative party, but the notion that these people have been gaslighted or ignored by the elite (which includes the parliament and the government) is patently absurd, given who ruled the country and what happened in the past 10 years.
> I meant that the vast majority of Britons (and of Westerns) believe that immigration has a negative effect on wages, which is a false credence.
Maybe they read Bank of England reports? [1]
> The static results suggest that the statistically significant negative effects of immigration on wages are concentrated among skilled production workers, and semi/unskilled service workers.
There's a University of Oxford study that confirms EU migration has had negligible impact on wages in the UK. The study appeared to be focused on wage decline. What I'm less convinced of, and what is much harder to measure, is what impact it has had on wages rising.
I'm pretty sure it is well known that globalization equalizes wages globally. That means they meet in the middle. Poor nations see relative wage growth and wealthy nations see relative wage decline. On average everyone is better off but it also means that those living in wealthy countries now feel extreme pressure to compete globally. For most people that simply means skilling up at college and moving to large cities to which investor money is flowing.
Globalization equalizes wages amongst people who can't lobby for protectionism. So only for the poor. If medical/drug patents and professionals were subjected to the same type of globalization that lower-leveraged workers were, inflation would run in reverse for the next 10 years. Instead, people who spend most of their income on consumption are drowning in what are really hidden tariffs and rent-seekers doing arbitrage.
This is a really good point, unfortunately I don’t think people will learn their lesson. Instead, we will complain about all the wasted food, and we will spend effort on trying to bring back this invisible servant class instead of investing in automation.
I disagree. The value of the pound plummeted as a result of Brexit. So relative wages might increase in future, but there is no guarantee that it will make workers any wealthier overall. Of course you might argue you only care about relative wealth, but then you have to worry about inflation due to rising cost of imports etc. I think it's more complicated than the simplistic picture you paint above.
For me the things that need to change in the UK are to (i) reduce the cost of access to education and (ii) reduce the cost of housing.
In the short term, sure, the domestic workers get higher wages, but in the long term it just incentivizes fruits to be imported directly from Eastern Europe instead.
On each country it really depends. For the US, low wage immigrant workers don't depress wages that much but in high skill areas immigrant workers can depress wages up to 20% last time I read a study on the matter. So it's really about what kind of work and where. Lots of engineers have felt the squeeze on immigrant labor for years but since engineers don't usually unionize they don't bark as much and thus bare the loss.
Immigration doesn't reduce the wages of those making the argument, who are usually employed in professional/managerial classes that benefit when there are lots of employees at the bottom.
This also illustrates the economically rational response to immigration, though. Be a turncoat. Move up the value chain into management (or other industries that benefit from a larger population of workers), so that you too can benefit.
It is a bit more complicated because if the wages of fruit picker decreases, the farmers may sell their fruits for a lower price. So everyone else's wage actually increases. Not the amount of £ you get at the end of the month but what you can afford with these £ (more fruits).
This same argument could be used to justify slavery. I'm quite unsympathetic to such arguments, especially when talking about the lowest classes of the society (as measured by wealth).
The meme to mock those critical of immigration (usually conservatives) is "Those dirty immigrants are taking our jerbs!"
It's a miss statement about when the crux of the issue is. It's not jobs being taken, it's wages being held low.
I worked at a warehouse that started pay at $12/hr. This was in 2016. Talking to one of the older guys, he started at $12/hr as well. In 2001. I'm sure you can guess what the worker makeup of that place looked like. There is no need to raise pay if you always have willing workers.
Usually nationalists. Conservatives love wages being lowered, and employees that can't complain without being deported. They're anti-immigration when it comes to law, but very pro-immigration when it comes to enforcement. Ideally, for them, they would have draconian immigration laws that would only begin investigations based on a tipline that only employers would have access to.
Work camps where exploited eastern europeans live in horrible conditions, their rights are violated, they get underpaid and a substantial portion of their wage goes to the agencies acting as middle men.
People would come in, live on site and be feed on site, work hard for 3 months (maybe moving sites as demand came and went) then leave and go back home.
The 3 months of hard work and bad conditions was worth it because of the buying power the wages had comparatively back home.
UK people simply wont put up with that because they have to use the wages in the UK.
The old system isn’t that much different from the new system is it? Just the agencies will get paid more for handling the legal side and logistics of importing the workers.
In fact I can see this happening across many industries, and if you are one of those people working minimum wage can only be a good thing? The import of cheap labour does push down the wages of the working class - so the middle/upper classes get to buy cheaper fruit...
I believe farmers will have to work with this new "normal", and it'll take a few years for them to figure out how to cope.
It's not like the working class doesn't have to eat. In fact, they will be hit hardest by increasing food prices.
> Indication of some degree of food insecurity was reported by 14.2% of the sample and tended to be higher amongst younger age groups, those on lower incomes, and home renters (as opposed to owners).
True - but other aspects of your running costs (electricity, gas, rent, etc) will not increase, as I don't believe they depend on cheap labour.
Interestingly (can't find the reference right now), I've read that the high cost of labour in the UK contributed to the push for mechanisation of farming, which resulted in the industrial revolution (something we have all benefited from). In China, labour costs were (are?) so low that there was no reason to invent a farming machine, when you could pay a peasant to do the job for less.
So if this runs long term, we will see further automation of farming?
Or just better distribution. It’s not hard for an Apple picker to pick a few dollars worth of apples per minute at harvest time, but that’s the supermarket price, not what the farmer can sell them off for per bushel.
I know picking isn’t the only cost, but it seems like the cost of picking doubling or trebling should have minute effect on profitability.
Farmers need to get better at capturing the price that consumers are willing to pay.
Somehow, farmers markets have become the place to pay premium prices instead of lower prices.
Or convince consumers that a bit of scab on an apple is fine to eat and doesn’t need to be destined to make sauce or juice.
Yes, "if". The problem is that companies don't move in lockstep with the broader economy, so it might take a year or two of food and goods increasing in price 12% before your company has managed to give you a 5% raise, which in turn requires them to raise the prices of their goods. And hopefully _their_ customers don't balk at the increased price because _they_ haven't yet been able to absorb their own set of wage increases.
The context of this post is that companies are having difficulty hiring and are having to increase wages. Which is what is being hypothesised to lead to price increases. Which would suggest that wage increases would come first in this instance.
Yes, but they're hesitant to do that because of the impact the wage increases (which then get passed on to consumers) will have on sales. There's this notion that companies could simply double or triple wages with a negligible impact on the bottom line or consumer prices but are just being dicks. Which is not really the case. Margins are just razor-thin. So you get in a sort of Mexican standoff situation. Who's going to blink first, raise wages, and lose sales?
If they can't find staff then the companies don't have much choice but to raise wages. They'll lose more sales if they have to close their business due to lack of staff.
A guy driving a truck might enable 10,000 burger sales in an hour. A cashier might enable 100. It's easier to raise the truck driver's wage.
Raising wages and prices can be done, of course. But if you're planning to export those goods to other countries, you've just made your products more expensive. If your goods are fungible, you may not be able to raise the price at all. Higher wages might simply make your business not viable in the context of international trade.
It will. And they will avoid at all costs to raise it, for higher interest rates will default everyone over leveraged, which is everything and everyone at this point outside of the preppers and Libertarian types which have been yelling about this for a long time now.
I don't know why they are surprised to receive not many applicants locally, as you can't support yourself in the UK on seasonal work.
The growing prosperity of other countries, may also mean you can't rely on the difference in purchasing power to attract seasonal workers from other countries.
Which leaves either investing in machinery, or perhaps marketing your job as an "experience" to those who aren't relying on the wage, but wouldn't mind some exercise outdoors.
In this case the jobs were always done by foreign seasonal workers. I dunno if Brexit has made them more expensive but I'd imagine they are less easily available.
But the funny thing is in Eastern Europe, where these workers come from and where they presumably are now, there too are record job vacancies and rising wages. So probably something to do with either the pandemic or overheating economy from the cheap money.
Much of Eastern Europe is also undergoing demographic collapse, with total fertility rates under 1.50, and unlike Western Europe they're not getting much in the way of immigrants. Even Syrian refugees etc simply pass through.
I was thinking it must be too soon to have a significant effect yet, but apparently I was wrong.
According to [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTPLQ647N], the working age population in Poland has declined by about 10% in 10 years.
> "We advertised locally for 70 fruit-pickers and we had nine applications. On follow-up, only one was still available... in terms of recruiting locally, we failed completely," says Ali Capper, the owner of Stocks Farm in Suckley
> There are currently NO vacancies at Stocks Farm.
> Thank you to everyone who has applied for roles. Due to an amazing amount of applicants, we have been flooded with enquiries. We have closed the April jobs and will reopen for August some time in the summer.
I noticed the article never mentioned anything about pay and conditions for the advertised fruit picking jobs.
My prediction is that the government will make it easier for people to come to Britain for seasonal work. And then they'll make it easier for companies that claim they have "labour shortages", regardless of whether those companies actually tried meaningfully improving pay and conditions first.
Seasonal agricultural labour has been a problem in the UK for literally centuries, since the move away from subsistence farming and the beginning of the industrial revolution. Traditional solutions, as well as migrant labour, include benefits such as subsidised housing and a minimal off-season social safety net. Which I guess are a form of higher wages, but more directly applied.
I suspect that the mix of crops could change in the medium term, to less labour-intensive and more automation-friendly ones. Expect lurid headlines and more expensive strawberry jam.
It will be interesting to see whether the government caves to ag-industry pressure and puts in place special summer visa schemes or similar. On the one hand, the current government is fairly right-wing. On the other; they are quite interventionist, aligned with business interests, and dependent on rural votes. And most of all, media-led. I'd guess they'll respond to headlines about fruit rotting on trees with some madcap scheme.
At her orchard, harvest has just started. It must be done quickly and requires many pairs of hands.
Ali had to turn to specialist recruitment firms and has brought in seasonal workers from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia.
What's a reasonable prediction here? Higher wages and more expensive fruits? A bunch of farms going bust?