I lavoratori dell’industria alimentare affermano di “non essere pagati abbastanza per permettersi i beni di prima necessità”

As the dust settles on the New Normal post-pandemic it has become very apparent that wages in this country are simply untenable at the low to mid level of almost any profession.

This is particularly confusing to many of us, as one of the things that became very apparent during the pandemic was how insanely important the people are who stock the shelves in supermarkets or who drive HGVs or who collect the waste or who ..

I worked in catering for 35 years, it has never been a well paid job, especially considering what the job entails. But minimum wage has done so much damage to what people can actually earn, The thing with catering was you could earn by working, it is hourly pay and if you wanted to earn you could earn, but you put the hours in, now you cannot put the hours in, basic wage killed it, and made harder to earn in a low paying job. Add to that, basic wage also pushes up the cost of living, and they being done up all ends, loosing the capacity to earn while at the same time raising the cost of everything.

To who ever made the comment just saying absolute bollocks, i cannot find it to reply, so i will reply here

That is 35 years lived experience mate, i have seen it with my own eyes, felt it with my own wage packet, people who work in catering were far better off before minimum wage, Yes you had to work long and hard to be better off, but we could afford our groceries and still have cash on the hip, now we cant afford our groceries, did you not read the article

A lot of factories up and down the country are using more and more immigrant labour which has been pushing wages and conditions down, as someone who works in QA for a massive food manufacturing company and at other factories and actively seeking a new job elsewhere we’ve seen sites bus more and more immigrant labour on lower wages from further afield and refusing to negotiate with the unions then wonder why there’s a drain of more experienced workers on the shop floor and quality is diving between cutting corners in ingredient specs, package sizes etc.

This is just another symptom of a wider problem in the UK that the owners of these companies just want to ensure that line goes up at any cost, I know there’s people on the factory floor who have been sick because viruses literally go through these places like a wild fire and forced off work due to regulatory requirements of food handling then actively have to go to food banks as they’ll get basic SSP and that’s it while the company makes record profits.

There are so many things wrong in the food industry and the reliance on finding the cheapest labour and method possible is causing massive problems in the sector and only seems to be getting worse.