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Brexit: give me a positive effect... XIV

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farfromthesun said:
I was sending similar items prior to July 1st, arriving in 2 or 3 days and without any additional costs.
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We’re only just easing into the mire Johnson’s government has created. The ‘la la not listening/ nothing to do with Brexit/ there’s still potatoes on the shelves attitude will soon become ragged. Sharp inflation has now returned and price hikes in food and energy along with periods of no supply are all going to bite. Only the best padded Brexitmongers are going to escape the pain and they’ll be pointing at anyone and everyone else apart from themselves for the pain.
 
TheDecameron said:
We’re only just easing into the mire Johnson’s government has created. The ‘la la not listening/ nothing to do with Brexit/ there’s still potatoes on the shelves attitude will soon become ragged. Sharp inflation has now returned and price hikes in food and energy along with periods of no supply are all going to bite. Only the best padded Brexitmongers are going to escape the pain and they’ll be pointing at anyone and everyone else apart from themselves for the pain.
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What's really tragic is that I was selling decent quality, fairly obscure music to people in the EU. Brexit has more or less put paid to that, as my previous post demonstrates. I don't need the money, I was just moving stuff on, but at a deeper level, people need music, and if there are barriers appearing due to Brexit then that's just really ****ing sad.
 
TheDecameron said:
We’re only just easing into the mire Johnson’s government has created. The ‘la la not listening/ nothing to do with Brexit/ there’s still potatoes on the shelves attitude will soon become ragged. Sharp inflation has now returned and price hikes in food and energy along with periods of no supply are all going to bite. Only the best padded Brexitmongers are going to escape the pain and they’ll be pointing at anyone and everyone else apart from themselves for the pain.
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Not to contradict you for no reason (because I agree with 99% of your message), but I have to say that sharp inflation hasn't returned. It never returns despite weekly predictions. The knee-jerk alarm after reading statistics has gone wonky after so long. The vision these people have of it is something like the 70s/80s, but factors then such as powerful unions against firms willing to raise prices as a battle tactic to counter nominal wage raise demands, is a thing of the past because the unions were broken. So the old wage-price spiral type of inflation is transplanting history on to now. They do this weekly in the press.

Is the population really so flush with cash to spend that it can override either supply or (true) productive capacity? I don't think so. The wealth gap is greater now than god knows when; high unemployment/underemployment, people in-between unemployment and waiting for dole money that is denied them, food banks... Under Brexit pressure of external costs, it's very possible firms are using their muscle to try and maintain profit margins, thus maintaining/raising their prices. Though who's going to counter that? People will be laid-off or forced to take a real wage cut. That does not equal rising inflation. And it aligns perfectly with the preferred methodology The Tories have been employing since 1979 to be its 'inflation release valve': forced unemployment policy. Where you get to live in lower-cost poverty. If it wasn't so dismal and wicked you could fall out of your chair laughing at the incompetence of it.
 
Le Baron said:
Not to contradict you for no reason (because I agree with 99% of your message), but I have to say that sharp inflation hasn't returned. It never returns despite weekly predictions. The knee-jerk alarm after reading statistics has gone wonky after so long. The vision these people have of it is something like the 70s/80s, but factors then such as powerful unions against firms willing to raise prices as a battle tactic to counter nominal wage raise demands, is a thing of the past because the unions were broken. So the old wage-price spiral type of inflation is transplanting history on to now. They do this weekly in the press.

Is the population really so flush with cash to spend that it can override either supply or (true) productive capacity? I don't think so. The wealth gap is greater now than god knows when; high unemployment/underemployment, people in-between unemployment and waiting for dole money that is denied them, food banks... Under Brexit pressure of external costs, it's very possible firms are using their muscle to try and maintain profit margins, thus maintaining/raising their prices. Though who's going to counter that? People will be laid-off or forced to take a real wage cut. That does not equal rising inflation. And it aligns perfectly with the preferred methodology The Tories have been employing since 1979 to be its 'inflation release valve': forced unemployment policy. Where you get to live in lower-cost poverty. If it wasn't so dismal and wicked you could fall out of your chair laughing at the incompetence of it.
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There isn't high unemployment at the moment. There's a labour shortage. Our factory is 70 odd short, of 600 fully staffed. Others are worse off.
 
stevec67 said:
There isn't high unemployment at the moment. There's a labour shortage. Our factory is 70 odd short, of 600 fully staffed. Others are worse off.
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It's tipping 4.9%. Higher than pre-Brexit vote and pre-covid (and some people have presumably left). So, why aren't people being hired if you need 70 people? There's no labour shortage.
 
Joe Hutch said:
A mismatch between jobs and people's locations?
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Or career expectations. Allison Pearson will be demanding students and left wing comedians are put into the fields, til she gets to the end of her Waitrose beef Wellington and finds someone has written “I ***d in this”.
 
Or that the private sector is always reluctant to employ long and middle-term unemployed people as a 'risk'? There's a very long and known trend of this.
 
This clip of PMQs is worth a look. Tory MP Roger Gale highlights the catastrophe in farming at present where vast quantities of crops are rotting in fields because of Brexit xenophobia screwing up labour supply (pickers and drivers). The lying Bullingdon shithead’s reply and deflection is highly telling (Twitter).

PS Given the farming community tended to be so overwhelmingly pro-Brexit in many respects I’m happy to give the middle finger and point out I want none of my tax spent on subsidies for their now non-economic businesses, but one also has to consider the empty shelves in supermarkets too. I’m sick of crap quality close to sell by fruit and veg being all that is available!
 
Le Baron said:
It's tipping 4.9%. Higher than pre-Brexit vote and pre-covid (and some people have presumably left). So, why aren't people being hired if you need 70 people? There's no labour shortage.
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Trust me, there is a labour shortage. My division of the company has 9 factories, all over the UK. Furthest east, norfolk, further west, Wales, north, Fife, south, Devon. All are between 10% and 25% down on staff. Our HR manager goes personally to the local job centre. Our town has 600 unemployed. We want 70 of them.
 
stevec67 said:
Trust me, there is a labour shortage. My division of the company has 9 factories, all over the UK. Furthest east, norfolk, further west, Wales, north, Fife, south, Devon. All are between 10% and 25% down on staff. Our HR manager goes personally to the local job centre. Our town has 600 unemployed. We want 70 of them.
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Trust me, there is labour available. The job centre only has a fraction of recorded numbers. Many people are not registered. A lot of others are trapped in other precarious jobs and afraid to move or balancing 2+ zero-hours 'jobs' they'd probably like to escape from. Start a recruiting campaign.

Can I ask if your organisation is willing to take on people who have been unemployed for 5+ years? And if it is offering full-hours, decently-paid jobs?
 
stevec67 said:
We're a food factory. We'll take anyone.
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In that case it might be a good idea to offer higher wages than competitors. This is a strategy known to guarantee the attraction of labour. If it's national minimum wage and lower, why would anyone choose it?
Okay, I know that is an unrealistic prospect in a neo-liberal economy, but if anyone is willing to take people on outside of the recently unemployed and the tiny number registered at the Job Centre, they would see there is no labour shortage. The very concept can't make sense; if it were so the number of transfer payments alongside increased spending (alongside this fictional 'full employment scenario) during Covid would have already caused it to surpass resource capacity and reach upper inflation. Also not happening. Nothing has altered in terms of unemployment being used as an inflation buffer to enable 'budget aims'.
 
Le Baron said:
In that case it might be a good idea to offer higher wages than competitors. This is a strategy known to guarantee the attraction of labour. If it's national minimum wage and lower, why would anyone choose it?
Okay, I know that is an unrealistic prospect in a neo-liberal economy, but if anyone is willing to take people on outside of the recently unemployed and the tiny number registered at the Job Centre, they would see there is no labour shortage. The very concept can't make sense; if it were so the number of transfer payments alongside increased spending (alongside this fictional 'full employment scenario) during Covid would have already caused it to surpass resource capacity and reach upper inflation. Also not happening. Nothing has altered in terms of unemployment being used as an inflation buffer to enable 'budget aims'.
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What is your experience of recruiting in the UK? I am aware of Steve’s and happen to be in Norfolk today where employment of workers from as far as Barbados is currently happening to try and save some of the produce, much of which has been wasted.

The hospitality sector is also struggling with the fag ends of summer not being maximised because the covers are down due to staff shortages. This is despite increases in pay which itself is a two edged sword as prices reflect it and those same people find their increased pay easily cancelled out.

If your contention that there are so many people available and willing is true, they are doing a good job of hiding. The adverts for staff are everywhere.
 
My experience in actual, hands-on, front-line, large-scale recruitment is: zero. This may lead to the retort: 'so then your view is worthless.' It's not like the problem is new though. Not even Brexit has led to an outflow of so many people that the UK now has an actual labour shortage relative to work opportunities, otherwise I should expect there to be full-employment and a significant increase in the bargaining position of any worker. Not in evidence.

What does 'labour shortage' actually mean? Because even the shady government figures of people "of working age available for work" is not significantly different than that of the last 10 years. So what happened? The actual number of people who could work is higher than those figures. There is a bulk of unemployed people, the credit-limited private sector can't/won't take them on as a risk (understandably) and government won't. That's probably a slightly separate issue, but the claim that there is a 'labour shortage' is not real. The recruitment of labour from Barbados is a particular choice for known reasons, not a sign of domestic shortage.
 
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