mac12:
11 pound is low since April I have been driving for a garden centre that grows fruit pickers there get the minimum wage plus piece work, the best pickers can earn £16 per hour.
Garden centres growing fruit pickers,whatever next!,I’m off down to Dobbies to see if they can grow me a Swedish ■■■■■■!
Corrected
hutpik:
Forgive me but i must add to my previous post that working part time or seasonal is a personal choice.Many people work extra in the summer and go back to ‘‘normal’’ hours the rest of the year.Before anyone comments about ‘‘abuses of social systems’’ by any working Groups the Money i make allows me to live a comfortable life here and i make NO claims of any sort upon the social system.If i choose not to work,or to work part time then it is my own responsibility not the social services.Mike
Hi Mike,
I don’t think that anyone suggested you were ‘working the system’.
Sounds like you’ve got things the way you want them, and good luck to you.
stobarttrucker:
from personal experience on piece rate,if you seem to be earning a good crack some bod will turn up with with a stopwatch and pen and paper to get the times down,bastid’s.
this used to go on a lot in the aircraft industry in WWII. It was meant to make the workers more productive, but what happened was that work would speed up and slow down as each ‘side’ tried to work the system to their own advantage. It caused endless disputes and loads of ill feeling.
puntabrava:
Trukkertone:
yes, £11 an hour … a program on telly yesterday about Romanian immigrants,
Fruit pickers near Boston Lincs earning a sight more than what I earn as a professional driver…
And I bet they don’t have to put up with all the crap that we have to.
And I am not having a pop at immigrants, that was the rate paid to all the pickers on the fruit farm, regardless of nationality…Farm pay would be a lot better than lorry drivers take home, ive offered an Irish lad £15hr flat rate to come back for harvest for a month or two.
the problem is though, it is just for harvest time.
With farms becoming increasingly arable-only, and cultivation/sowing happening almost as the combine leaves the field it’s difficult to find anything for anyone to do until next august.
GasGas:
Nothing wrong with any of that Mike.I often think that we need 2 things to get the country back to work.
Have generous unemployment benefits, for those who have worked, but taper them off after 6 months or so.
Close down weekday daytime TV.
I suspect quite a few people would start to find their way back into work if this happened.
How about “You need to carry a payslkp as authority to be out and about at night”? 
No pubbing, clubbing, hanging around outside the chippy, or doughnutting in your ford fiesta with boom bangs and a big spoiler…
I did a lot of farm work in New Zealand (not picking). Not sure if it still exists but the used to be a setup called FHINZ, which gave you a list of participating farms. The idea was you did 4 hours work for your bed and board.
First farm I contacted took me on a he was going away and was looking for someone to help his girlfriend (I was only young and innocent so no innuendo please!) around the farm for a few days.
He told me when I was due to leave that he rarely took on british travellers because they were lazy! He gave me a written reference and also contacted some of the other farms in areas I was travelling through. Most farmers said they would often tell british callers that they already had a worker staying.
I ended up getting jobs which not only gave me lodgings, but also “pocket money” to see me on my travels!
Trukkertone:
yes, £11 an hour … a program on telly yesterday about Romanian immigrants,
Fruit pickers near Boston Lincs earning a sight more than what I earn as a professional driver…
And I bet they don’t have to put up with all the crap that we have to.
And I am not having a pop at immigrants, that was the rate paid to all the pickers on the fruit farm, regardless of nationality…
You should’ve used the time taken to write this thread to write out your fruit picking application form 
GasGas:
puntabrava:
Trukkertone:
yes, £11 an hour … a program on telly yesterday about Romanian immigrants,
Fruit pickers near Boston Lincs earning a sight more than what I earn as a professional driver…
And I bet they don’t have to put up with all the crap that we have to.
And I am not having a pop at immigrants, that was the rate paid to all the pickers on the fruit farm, regardless of nationality…Farm pay would be a lot better than lorry drivers take home, ive offered an Irish lad £15hr flat rate to come back for harvest for a month or two.
the problem is though, it is just for harvest time.
With farms becoming increasingly arable-only, and cultivation/sowing happening almost as the combine leaves the field it’s difficult to find anything for anyone to do until next august.
Very true.
GasGas:
When you are working hard at peak season, you can earn a quid or two picking.But you have to live for the rest of the year, so you have to see these earnings in that context.Gipsies used to do picking, and cockneys from London used to get special trains laid on for them to go hop-picking in Kent.Neither of these groups would contemplate doing that kind of work now.
At best it’s hard work, outside in all weathers. No sick pay, no holidays. And when working conditions are bad, you work even harder and earn less money. In East Anglia the job was ruined by gangmasters: their antics made driver agencies look like charities.
Before the influx of folk from points East I recall seeing a farmer from Cornwall who was struggling to get anyone to work picking new spuds and daffs…he had to plough the flowers back in. So, I suspect, if the ‘Easties’ didn’t do it, no one would, and there would be very little home-grown fresh produce on sale.
The ‘seasonal labour’ that I have spoken to doing this job are well-educated, hard-working young people…mostly doing degrees in agriculture, and many of them actually putting money away as a first step to buying their own farms. I doubt that the average Brit ‘unemployable’ could do what they do: in fact I seem to recall a TV prog of a few years ago where a number of unemployed who were voiciferous about ‘foreigners’ ‘taking their jobs’ were given an opportunity to wok in the fields and packinghouses, half of them didn’t turn up, one who did was too hungover to work and the rest had packed it in by lunchtime complaining that they had only agreed to it because they wanted to be on TV: they didn’t realise they would have to actually do the work.
Until such time as we get our house in order, we are going to have to continue to welcome hard-working and intelligent people to these shores to do the work that our own people won’t.
We’ve now got two generations who think that a sure sign of stupidity is having a job.
Well said
pick up fruit ,vagebatle-one from hardest job in the world.yes no point,no VOSA. but 9 from 10 drivers if go to this job,next day not return to farm.for this job must have metal health,plastic back,strong head.this job not for ex or present class 1 drivers.
Trukkertone:
yes, £11 an hour … a program on telly yesterday about Romanian immigrants,
Fruit pickers near Boston Lincs earning a sight more than what I earn as a professional driver…
And I bet they don’t have to put up with all the crap that we have to.
And I am not having a pop at immigrants, that was the rate paid to all the pickers on the fruit farm, regardless of nationality…
Fruit picking is a thankless task and anyone who does it deserves good pay. If you are really that jealous why don’t you apply for the job ? 11 quid and hour isn’t very good in todays society surely ? In 1994 Tesco drivers were on 12 an hour and in 1998 I did a short spell free lance and charged 12.50 an hour which every company paid without questioning it.
I had the chance with the Young Farmers Club to join a team of combine drivers working 20 hour days in the USA in the Bible bashing belt corn fields.Food was free.Pay was low.But what a great experince traveling across America.
Back then i got a JI training visa and was placed on a large dairy unit near Lansing.MI then moved to Fort Lauderdale.FLA on a tree plantation exporter.
The dairy farm was bankrupt before i arrived.Did not get paid for a year.I became the property of the bank and paid when i left to travel on an Amtrak train for three weeks touring.
I ate macorini cheese and candy bars while the farmer was getting drunk in his basement hidden wine cellar.In that time only two days off.15 hour day milking three times a days alone.And tractor or harvest work in between milking or feeding calves or mucking out.I was 17 years old just out of school.