Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.
On the flip side though, the educational/academic landscape for the upper quartile of young adults is hugely more competitive. Nobody is making it to a Russell Group uni on cruise control, and getting top grades AND having a part time job AND hobbies and a social life isn't easy.
Then you have menial work that's actually fairly skilled. Social care, childcare and so on. That's not something a student is going to do for a couple of years on the way to something better.
And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.
UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.
Not really. I am talking generally about this notion that we need to keep importing people.
> Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.
That is often repeated but I don't think that is quite as true as people make out. There aren't robots yet (or likely to be) stacking the supermarket shelves. Yes self service has taken most of the cashier jobs (not all btw).
> And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.
In other countries to emigrate there you need to have skills they need. When I moved abroad previously the company had to justify looking outside of the country to employ me. I don't understand how it can be justified that they can't find cleaning staff. BTW I employ a cleaner so I know roughly how much they cost.
> UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.
It doesn't matter whether it is small or not (I don't think it as small as you are making out). It shouldn't be happening. Also just because you don't like the people that are highlighting this issue, doesn't mean that the issue isn't important.
The reason why things are a mess is that nothing gets sorted out properly in the UK. We have had leadership failures now for years.
On the cashier jobs - the thing is that they can rely on fewer and more trained/experienced staff. This may not be a bad outcome for those in the jobs, but it means less availability of casual work.
Which is not the same thing as no availability, but there used to be plenty of this kind of work to go around, such that it was the norm that 17/18 year olds could get it without particularly trying. That is not the case now.
Trying to bring skilled labour into the UK, or trying to get residence as an apparently useful and self-sufficient person, is actually quite difficult, so I'm not sure how all the low-skilled labour ends up here, other than large agencies in areas (social care, farm work) with known skill shortages.. being large agencies, the bureaucratic overhead isn't too bad for them, whereas for an individual or small company, it's more trouble than it's worth. There's no way you can just bring a cleaner over from abroad because you want someone to clean your house/office.
As to shouldn't be happening. Yes. But as for so many other things in the UK and its gradual slide towards a low-trust society. So it becomes a case of figuring out which battles to pick, which ones are genuinely impacting peoples' day to day. And I think collectively (not particularly a left vs right thing), the country has forgotten how to prioritise that.
> Trying to bring skilled labour into the UK, or trying to get residence as an apparently useful and self-sufficient person, is actually quite difficult, so I'm not sure how all the low-skilled labour ends up here, other than large agencies in areas (social care, farm work) with known skill shortages.. being large agencies, the bureaucratic overhead isn't too bad for them, whereas for an individual or small company, it's more trouble than it's worth.
Most of the skilled labour that I've encountered in the UK from immigration was Indians etc. that Accenture brought over. It is a gold ticket for the Indian developers and it is cheaper than paying people like me. So they do the same thing from the most skilled to the least skilled if the company is large enough.
> There's no way you can just bring a cleaner over from abroad because you want someone to clean your house/office.
I wasn't claiming to. I was saying that I know roughly what the costs are.
> As to shouldn't be happening. Yes. But as for so many other things in the UK and its gradual slide towards a low-trust society. So it becomes a case of figuring out which battles to pick, which ones are genuinely impacting peoples' day to day. And I think collectively (not particularly a left vs right thing), the country has forgotten how to prioritise that.
This feels like a false dichotomy. Many things can be done quickly if the bureaucracy wills it. The fact is that they don't.
Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.
On the flip side though, the educational/academic landscape for the upper quartile of young adults is hugely more competitive. Nobody is making it to a Russell Group uni on cruise control, and getting top grades AND having a part time job AND hobbies and a social life isn't easy.
Then you have menial work that's actually fairly skilled. Social care, childcare and so on. That's not something a student is going to do for a couple of years on the way to something better.
And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.
UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.