>> >>
>> Yeah, let's import cheap foreign labour instead of paying a decent wage to our own
>> workers.
>>
>> My guess is that was what Pat would have said.
>>
And that, in nutshell, is why so many voters voted leave. They weren’t seeing any of the benefits of freedom of movement and open markets. They weren’t the ones studying at EU universities, getting jobs in the EU or buying property there. The metropolitan left tries to ignore this, but reality is that the bulk of what was their core vote, the working class, have seen continued downward pressure on their pay and conditions enabled in part by freedom of movement of labour. They should be championing improving pay for these sectors, but they can’t bring themselves to do it. The pendulum has swung the other way, and in all probability it’ll equalise somewhere higher than it was and lower than it is. Some things will cost more, and some are too cheap anyway. Can it be right that a 2 litre bottle of sparking water can be bought for less than 20p? Maybe not, now that CO2 has gone up massively ;) But bottling and transporting that bulk around is only possible if transport is cheap…
Let’s not also forget that the web of Working Tax Credits put in place by Gordon Brown (at a cost he estimated to be around £1 billion but which now costs us around £15 billion) is also a huge subsidy to companies employing low paid workers. All else being equal, if salaries increase then the bill for this should also fall.
Paying someone responsible for drinking a 42 tonne lorry through busy streets to a town centre supermarket at anti-social times just £12 an hour was never right really, was it? Even with the EU labour, the average age of a lorry driver was mid fifties. Take out the younger Eastern European drivers and I wonder what that is now? Until now few companies have invested in training new drivers; why would they when there’s a constant flow of already qualified, cheap labour coming to fill the jobs. But what disruption does is reshape supply chains and create opportunities so I wouldn’t get too gloomy about it :)
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PDA PAT new
PDA PAT new