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It's Autumn.
"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," as John Keats so
evocatively put it. It is also the apple-picking season.
Of course - as many readers will know - this was always the time
of year when poor people from rural communities could earn
themselves a little extra cash by working out in the fields. The
work is casual, meaning that you never know from day-to-day
whether you will be working the following day or not. It is
peace-work, meaning that you are paid, not by the hour, but by
the amount of fruit you pick (the faster you pick, the more you
earn.) It is also off-the-cards, meaning that (unofficially, of
course) you can go on signing on while you are at it. This last
fact is of mutual benefit to both the farmer and the worker. The
farmer has a plentiful supply of cheap labour available as and
when he needs it. If the weather is bad, or the fruit poor, then
he can lay-off his work-force at a moment's notice. But if the
weather is good, and the fruit abundant, he usually has more
than enough workers to supply his needs. On the other hand, the
unemployed worker benefits too. Having a basic income already,
the worker is not dependant upon the work, can go at his or her
own pace, can take a break whenever he or she feels like it,
isn't obliged to turn up if other commitments (such as signing
on) get in the way, and is generally his or her own boss. It's
as good a way of earning money as any.
And it is good work too, as I can testify from my own
experience. It's not only that you have some extra money in your
pocket, to spend on those necessary little luxuries (such as a
few extra nights down the pub, maybe, or saving up for
Christmas), but the work is healthy, invigorating, and
inherently satisfying. There's something about working out in
the misty Autumn fields that is unlike any other form of labour.
This is a job, you know, which has been going on like this for
as long as there have been human beings on this planet:
gathering in the Summer's harvest in one, final, intense burst
of frenetic labour, before it's time to batten down the hatches
for the dark days of Winter. The very act of doing the work
makes you feel in touch with some ancient, primal force: the
Earth itself, no doubt.
Unfortunately, in the last few years, things have begun to
change.
I've just bumped into a friend of mine on the High Street. She's
been out in the fields - first of all picking strawberries, and,
latterly, apples and pears - since the beginning of Summer.
She's not in the fields today though. Why? She's been laid off.
It's not that there aren't apples and pears to pick, or that the
weather is bad. The trees are still bulging with fruit, and the
weather is fair. There are even strawberries out there,
late-fruiting varieties, under plastic tunnels. No. It's that
the farmer has employed a bunch of Australian workers to do the
job instead. Before that she worked on another farm. She was
laid off from there too, this time because they had Eastern
European workers to do the job.
"So how do you feel about that?" I asked.
"Pretty pissed off, actually," she said. "You ask any one. We're
all pissed off." And she went off into an extended diatribe
about how bad the foreign pickers are, how they might be fast,
but they bruised all the fruit. "You hear the apples clumping
into the boxes," she said. "They won't be back next year, so
they don't care."
The demographics of the fruit picking population has been
shifting for a number of years now. In the last century and for
most of this, the work was done by travellers, moving around the
country in family groups. Often the head of the family would
simply buy the whole crop from the farmer, pick it and sell it
himself. I heard one story which illustrates this. The farmer in
question had a cherry orchard, which was picked, year by year,
by the same family. It had been like this in the times of his
father too. Every year, at the exact moment when the fruit was
ripe, the family would turn up, the head of the family would
negotiate a price, and then they would set about picking. The
whole family was involved, from the smallest toddler, to the
grandparents. And then, one year, the head of the family came up
to the farmer, and with an air of profound sadness, told him
they would not be back next year. "My family no longer respects
me," he said. "I can't tell the youngsters what to do any more."
That was about 20 years ago.
More recently, the work was done almost exclusively by women.
The day was structured around school hours, and in the Summer
the women would bring the kids along, who would themselves learn
how to pick. That changed when health and safety rules banned
children from farms. Latterly the work was done by unemployed
people, or by women who could organise baby-sitters. Everyone I
spoke to said that women make the best pickers. Men have brutal
fingers, I was told, and can never quite get the hang of
combining speed of movement with gentleness of touch. Indeed, a
man could learn more than just picking fruit from working in the
fields. Perhaps he could learn how to handle women too.
The Eastern European workers started turning up on the farms
after the fall of communism, and have been growing in numbers
ever since. I spoke to one of the farmers about this. How come
it is worth his while to bus these workers all that distance,
when there is a plentiful supply of local labour available?
"The trouble with the English workers is you don't know if
they're going to turn up or not," he said. "You don't know how
many will turn up, or how good they will be. It's very difficult
to run a business with that kind of uncertainty. With the
Eastern Europeans we book them months in advance, we know how
many there will be and for how long they will work, so we can
plan the whole season on that basis. Also, we can discipline
them. If one of them is a quarter of an hour late, we impose a
£5 fine. We can't do that with the English workers. Also, they
are far better pickers. They pick more fruit, they work longer
hours and - I have to admit - sometimes we pay them a little
less than the English workers. This is a very competitive
business," he added. "It's difficult to believe, but sometimes
it's cheaper to fly fruit in from California than it is to grow
and pick the fruit locally."
At the height of the season, he told me, he had about 80 Eastern
Europeans working for him, living in caravans on the farm. There
were still 40 of them now. They were from all over. Estonians,
Lithuanians, Poles, Czeches, Slovakians, Bulgarians, Hungarians.
"Not so many Poles or Hungarians any more," he said. "They think
of themselves as Tiger Economies these days. The English workers
could learn a lot from them, from their dedication, their
commitment." And he told me a story. Sometimes, he said, he put
the workers on a fixed-rate instead of peace-work, but he
noticed that the Eastern Europeans would visibly slow-down. He
asked one of them why this was? "When I get a fixed wage," he
was told, "I am a Communist. But when I am on peace work, I am a
Capitalist."
I went over to see the Eastern Europeans in their camp. They
share 20 six-berth caravans in a field, four to a caravan. They
are also provided with showers, toilets, a kitchen, and a TV
room. I spoke to the most articulate English speaker, a
Slovakian named Joseph. "Do you think you are being exploited?"
I asked.
"No. Not exploited," he said. "I earn the same in a week here as
I can earn in a month at home." About £250 a week, he told me.
"Sometimes we hear the English workers are paid more than us.
This makes us angry. But then it is explained that the English
workers have to pay tax."
I didn't want to tell him that, actually, the English workers
pay no tax either.
He said he had paid £90 for the trip, which had taken 24 hours
in a coach. It was all part of the deal. He was given a list of
farms and asked to select the one he wanted to work on. It
turned out, from what he had heard, that he had probably
selected the best farm in the region.
"Do you like England?" I asked.
"Is OK," he said, non-committally.
"And are you saving any money?"
"Some of the workers here they save everything. They live of
bread and they never go out. But I cannot live in a caravan like
that. I like to eat. I like to go to the pub. The beer is
expensive here, £2 a pint. In my home it is 20p a pint. So I
save about half what I earn. When I first went to the pub I was
surprised. Close at 11 o'clock. They say: 'you go home now!' So
I say, 'where is the next pub?' 'No, you don't understand,' they
say, 'all pubs closed, finished.' In my country, no one cares. 1
o'clock. 2 o'clock. It doesn't matter."
"How do you get on with the locals?" I asked.
"They're always fighting," he said. "Pick fights on us. Pick
fights on each other. It's because they drink their beer too
quick," he added, "because the pubs close too early."
After that I went to see Colin, a supervisor at the farm where I
used to work, and a man I respect. How did he feel about the
changes? I asked.
"The English workers can't pick," he said. "You know yourself,
Chris: a little bit of rain and they all disappear. Or it's
tea-break after tea break. They think they're out there to
socialise. And - you can write this down if you want - if it
wasn't for the Eastern Europeans I wouldn't have a job now. It's
the Eastern Europeans who're keeping the farm going. They
haven't taken the English worker's jobs away from them. The
English workers can still work if they want. It's just that the
Eastern Europeans are more reliable."
"Are they being exploited?" I asked.
"Of course not!" he said, laughing. "They go on strike if they
don't like the rates. They've done that a few times. Then we're
really stuck. We have to pay them what they want. They're very
aware of the value of money, don't you worry. They know
precisely what they're worth."
Future changes in the Day Casual Worker's rules means that this
process is likely to escalate. Farmers will be forced to take
people's NI numbers before they can work, meaning that
unemployed British workers will be even less likely to get jobs
on farms. The only hope is that benefit rules might be relaxed
too, so that workers could declare their income, but stay on
benefits if they are temporarily laid off.
The problem with farm-work is that it is unreliable and
dependant on the weather. As the farmer told me, "our factory
has no roof."
When I'd gone to visit Joseph in his caravan I'd noticed a row
of beer cans on a shelf above the bed. The Slovakian workers had
been trying all the available beers. There were cans of Tennants,
cans of Red Stripe, cans of Carlsburg, cans of Special Brew.
"Which one did you like best?" I asked.
"This one," he said, pointing at a can of Tennants. "See. Made
with Czech yeast."
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