sammym:
IF there is no deal. For a short time there will be no change.
Then the churn of imported drivers will decrease. And the big transport co’s will do what they have done for a while and cry a shortage. No government, be them blue, red, pink or green will want to carry the can for not enough cans of baked beans on a shelf. So they will import drivers on mass.
Road haulage is too important for them not to do something. It’s the first sign to a normal person that something is wrong, and it’s easy to fix. Just make an exemption for EE drivers.
If Brexit is a sucess you will need the drivers. If it’s a failure you will need the drivers to hide that. Anyone who thinks wages will go up significantly is a fool and deluded.
There’s unlikely ever to be a shortage of baked beans on the shelves, because baked beans manufacturers have an interest in selling beans and keeping their own factories running.
What may happen, if the bosses can no longer import cheaper drivers, is that the cost of baked beans will simply go up marginally, as consumers are forced to pay for the wages demanded by drivers in the settled workforce (who are amply available, in the form of both licenced drivers, and of trainees who will quickly enter the game if pay and conditions improve significantly).
This will not result (as some often laughably say) in runaway inflation or drivers losing as much at the checkout as they gain in wages, because drivers do not spend all of their wages on baked beans, and drivers’ wages are only a small slice of the cost of putting beans on shelves.
The actual losers will be rentiers, whose bargaining power will not be increased by a reduction in cheap imported labour, and whose unearned income is not from wages and who thus will have no gain in income to set against the increased cost of their bean-buying.
Of course, people are probably living in a dreamworld if they think the Tories are going to cut bosses off from cheap imported labour. Just because we are out of the EU, does not mean the Tories cannot grant visas to EU workers who will fill what they deem a “shortage occupation”, or that they will not continue to increase the number of visas granted to cheap non-EU imported labour (which has already reached a record high under this Tory government).
Just look at the supposed nurse shortage. The Tories cut the bursaries and training courses available, creating a tax saving which can be passed on in tax cuts for the rich. Would-be nurses in the settled population can then perhaps be forced into competing for similar but much lower-paying jobs in care homes, for example. Meanwhile, they import ready-trained and experienced nurses trained abroad, who will also accept lower pay than settled nurses, and saving the cost of training entirely. The gains again then go to the rich in tax cuts. The rich are winners every time, whilst settled workers lose wages, foreign societies lose their skilled and experienced workers in which they invested, and the most surprising thing is that settled workers who actually have a vote on all this, keep voting for the Tories.
