Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDaddy
I'm interested in this part, what do you think will happen now they can't undercut British wages with cheap imported labour? I remember banging on relentlessly about this 15+ years ago and no one seemed to care back then.
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I suspect a degree of consolidation in industries like fruit growing to take advantage of the economies of scale, coupled with investment in technology leading to a requirement for fewer, but somewhat skilled jobs, and multi-skilling of workers as they will need to stay with the business full time rather than be hired and fired seasonally. If any of this happens it will only be an extension of the trend already occurring in production of many salad items, which are increasingly produced in large, specialised and highly mechanised environments. The disincentive of doing this until now has been the ability of just anyone with a few fields and several hundred yards of PVC to throw up some poly tunnels and then pay Polish students per punnet when the strawberries are ripe.