Food industry workers say they are ‘not paid enough to afford basics’

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.

It’s wild how we went from calling them heroes to letting them struggle to pay bills. The pandemic really laid bare which jobs are actually essential for society to function. It’s a national embarrassment that the people who literally feed us can’t afford the basics. We need a fundamental shift in how we value this kind of work.

I don’t think this is actually a ‘pay is too low’ issue, I think it’s a ‘housing is too expensive’ issue. Even minimum wage is actually a pretty high wage, if you compare it to other European countries. The problem is that demand for housing is so insanely high that its price has got ridiculous.

Immigration is bad for both of those things of course – it’s provided a source of cheap labour for decades which has suppressed wages, at least anything that wasn’t at or close to minimum wage already. Your position in the labour market is largely based on how easy you are to replace, and when there’s a constant supply of new people arriving who will do the work for less, the answer is very easy. And even more obviously, they add demand for housing, which is extremely inelastic in terms of supply.

We need to stop inviting so many people into the country every year, and then we can ease the pressure on housing and we should also see labour rates rise in sectors like this where the pay is not good enough for it to be worth taking the job as an established resident.

Queue the people blaming immigrants for the issues poor people face. Rather than the top 1% that have continued to horde all the wealth.

“Don’t blame the slave owners for exploiting slaves. Get angry at the slaves for being exploited!”

The problem isn’t pay it’s the extortionate cost for housing from shortages. 

Minimum wage is fairly high in the UK compared to elsewhere. 

They’re in common company, most Americans are not paid enough. The dream’s been dead for decades, it’s only just coming to light.

The food industry is also swarmed with foreign labour. Foreign workers decreases the demand, therefore lowers the wages.

Its the same with all factory work, not just the food industry.

Does it mean the people harvesting the food? My understanding it was never a great salary to begin with which is why it attracted migrants, students and those that needed part time hours.

Bloody disgusting.

I wonder if the business owners cannot afford the basics either.

I highly doubt it.

If they can afford to pay their workers a living wage similar to the London living wage (not perfect i know), they should do so.

If they can’t then they deserve to go to the wall (bankruptcy). You can’t have capitalism where companies are rich via abuse slave labour and paying peanuts.

If they can’t afford it then go bankrupt. Good riddance.