We pay min wage or better. How much do you expect to earn for packing chicken in a tray?
Brexit: give me a positive effect... XIV
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
- Status
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
Then you should advertise this as widely as possible. If it's for less than 6-8 hours who will give up what they doing now for a few hours?
I've done plenty of 'real world work'. Been fired from a bank and done a stint in a pallet factory. I have no shame, but they pay shit wages for the hard work.
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
I'm serious that you should be broadly advertising this rare full-time job. I currently live in a different country though, so the commute isn't convenient. I'm also a vegetarian.
I'm jesting, but if you're offering full-time work at fair wages, 10/10 and I hope you get as many workers as possible.
It is indeed supported by reality. I'm the one who works in a chicken factory, remember. How much more real do you want? We are advertising locally, and at the job centre, we are offering £50 bonus for anyone who refers family or friends, what more do you want? Do the job for them? Oh, and no point getting aerated with you? No point talking to you, I think you mean.
Then again, what do I know? I'm just a guy working in a chicken factory employing 600 people.
We are doing our best, the labour just isn't there. We have people picking up £300 overtime for a Saturday of unskilled work. Don't tell me that they are underpaid.
Le Baron
Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
Have you considered that people might not want to pack chicken? Or that they've been 40 years socialised into the view that they will be ripped off in a non-professional' job? I'm not saying you're ripping them off, but it's been a long time in the making.
There's still not a general labour shortage in the UK. This would mean there is full employment/several hundreds of thousands of people have magically disappeared. Or it could be the usual Tory talking point that they're all too lazy to do the job?
Of course they don't want to pack chicken. Who would? Guess what, being a technical manager in the same place isn't exactly cushy, but guess what again, it's what I do for money. I'd rather be Kylies toyboy, but she's not hiring.
flatpopely
Prog Rock/Moderator
I was once out of work, in my industry, so became a labourer on a building site for 6 months. I bloody hated it but it paid the bills. If I was out of work now, would pack chicken, of course I would.
MikeMA
pfm Member
Every little helps. There is now a shortage of industrial CO2 . It's amazing the number of food products which depend on its use.
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
You edited/deleted the one that caught my eye...
Anyway, I don’t really have the words right now and I’m likely to ramble, I’m just looking at these posts over a cuppa this morning and my initial thought is the problem has been created over many years by flawed neoliberal policy at both national and EU level. It’s 2021 and my opinion of how workers are exploited is the same as that of my mother who was born in 1933. Things look different but work out the same in the end...exploitation of workers by business.
I don’t expect a reply from you as you like to report to the forum you ignore me, but might it be true people are considering the whole employment package and industry reputation? We hear a lot about supposed well paid HGV drivers but working conditions are poor. Describe the overall employment package and working conditions. For example, you emphasised people earning £300 overtime on a Saturday. Is that extra work necessary to pay the bills for the average person? I don’t think people want that in 2021, and why should they? Many have gone to Uni, after all, they are better educated than in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. They want better and why shouldn’t they? This is a rich country, as a society we should be striving to make things better.
So what exactly is involved in packing chickens? Are people on their feet and non-stop for 5 hours, can’t go for a slash, then get a 5 minute break with an aggressive time and motion manager monitoring every move they make, keeping them in fear of their job then another few hours on their feet? This is how it was in a car factory in the 70’s but it’s 2021. What are the normal start and end times? Do people need a car to get to the factory? Can people get a phone call on any random day and are expected to drop their plans and come to work that day immediately? It’s hardly an industry with a great reputation regardless of how your factory may operate.
I would sooner drive a HGV, a bus or many other things that claim they are short of people right now.
I think what is happening is companies are refusing to wake up to the fact they have to offer a decent overall working package, 20-45 year olds nowadays are simply not like those of a generation ago and why should they be?
I doubt this is how the tories and their backers envisaged it but it will be great if the days of cheap labour and piss-taking working conditions have gone. Good riddance. The private sector needs to step up, pay less to executives and managers, attract staff by improving both pay and conditions plus creating a respectful working environment for everyone.
I’m off out with the dog. I am probably barking up the wrong tree, anyway.
A big religious hotel conference centre near me closed for the entire Covid period and only reopened this July, they laid off all 250 staff except for the manager and four maintenance team.
I only recognised a few of the staff when I went to do a job the other week, I asked one if not all of them had come back? she said they'd been asked to reapply for their jobs but on zero hours only and no sick pay, hence most of them replied with GTFO.
I only recognised a few of the staff when I went to do a job the other week, I asked one if not all of them had come back? she said they'd been asked to reapply for their jobs but on zero hours only and no sick pay, hence most of them replied with GTFO.
It's going to stop meat production at sites that use it to stun animals before slaughter. Yes, stop factories. We use it to extend shelflife in gas flush packs, MAP. The supermarkets have been told to take shorter life product, that means more wastage.
A tip for Christmas turkey: either buy now, frozen, or book one at a farm shop. The big supermarkets will be getting shorted this year, there won't be enough. We don't have the staff to make the orders.
Another tale from the sharp end, we sell meat into the "meal kit" manufacturers. You know the thing, you get a tray delivered with everything you need, boil the little bag of rice, fry the bag of meat, add the bag of ready-sliced veg, add the sauce, bingo. Our orders are downthis week because they can't get packing staff to fill the trays. This is in London.
eternumviti
Insufficient privileges to reply.
Every cloud...
SteveS1
I heard that, pardon?
Not so much barking up the wrong tree as perhaps not seeing two different employment scenarios. There are no doubt many companies that might fit your description. But the ones in focus here and at risk (and there are thousands) are on the cusp of whether they exist or not. They don't offer high wages and never will, because there isn't that sort of money in the products or services they provide. It's always a compromise between offering prices and sustaining costs that allow a business to survive or hopefully invest and grow.
Then there is the other issue - quality of staff. There was a very interesting program, possibly by Panorama a couple of years back on UK farms and who they employed and why. Obviously there were limits to what they could pay, but it was seldom the limiting factor. Their problems with employing locals was that they were more unreliable and less productive. Many thought the work "too hard" and generally thought they were doing the employer a favour by turning up. OK if that's how they feel but let's not pretend that UK business should be hampered by such nonsense if it isn't necessary and there are people from elsewhere who want the work.
I don't know Steve or his business, but what he is saying is very consistent with what I saw in his neck of the woods yesterday and the people I spoke to.
As a society we've painted ourselves into this corner of expecting very cheap produce and lots of it at the supermarket whenever you want it, 24/7 in some cases. Same goes for wanting your cheap tat from Amazon delivered next day for nowt.
It's disgraceful really, you have lorry drivers working for firms who bid for contracts in an auction style situation, lowest bidder wins obvs, then they have to spend weeks away from home living in their cab, pissing in laybys and cooking their dinner on a camping stove for the firm to meet that bid. Same goes for factory workers at firms trying to meet the lowest shit price they're being paid for their product, having to piss in a pop bottle at the side of the line because they can't get a toilet break.
Colin L
High-tech low-life
My impression when in Europe is, compared to the UK, they are higher cost but higher quality economy. Taxes are higher but worker protection better, less double-job working, reliance on overtime and little zero hours bullshit. The UK is rapidly converging on the US model of low tax, casualised labour and high inequality.
SteveS1
I heard that, pardon?
Agreed but this problem lies with everyone, not just employers. It also doesn't address the problem of sweeping away all this and not having the employment. After all, you see plenty of enthusiasm for the concept of "this will be the end of low wages" but there is nothing said about "this will be the end of cheap prices" as if those matters are unrelated.
Could it be another low tax/quality services fantasy?
Brian
Eating fat, staying slim
It doesn’t need to be said these are related, it’s obvious.
What you see from food industry apologists is the tale the consumer demands cheaper product. It’s rubbish and a getout for pedalling sub standard stuff and treating staff like crap. People buy what is available, the main driver is greed for excess profit.
As an aside, I am very much prepared to pay more for improved working conditions should that be normal in our society, but not for lining the pockets of executives, bullying management and shareholders.
SteveS1
I heard that, pardon?
Good for you, pity about the people who cannot afford your choices. The public and governments are very used to cheap food and benefit levels and the lack of subsidy for healthy food reflect that. The food industry supports those objectives, it doesn't drive them. You also omitted to say where the larger scale funding would come from (outside of your own gesture) if this situation changes.
Given that UC is to be cut I think we can be sure about the government's attitude to higher food prices.
- Status