What should be looked at is why people won't take those jobs. Often its down to pay and conditions. There was a chap on Radio 4 recently who had voted leave but was getting worried that his fruit farm would have to close if unskilled workers aren't let in. He said he'd only ever had one British employee and they left after a day.
Company I work for does some work for a chain of luxury spas. Virtually all their staff are from Eastern Europe. They get paid minimum wage then charged for accommodation which is of an appalling standard and work ridiculous hours with little objection as the spas are all out in the middle of nowhere and they can't afford transport to take them anywhere. Nobody British is going to do that, the Eastern Europeans only do it as it works out OK for sending money back home but its a miserable life and really shouldn't be allowed.
There's a whole society of minimum wage, zero hour contract workers, both British and European that earn so little they are basically homeless. Sofa surfing where they can. At the same time the corporations are saying they can't afford wage increases, despite making millions if not billions in profit, and that any increase will lead to increased prices.
None of that is to do with the EU and the problems won't magically disappear when we leave.
You're absolutely right in a lot of what you say there, in fact I agreed with everything until the last line.
I worked in a Spa Hotel (in Warwickshire) when I came back from California about 4 years ago. I ran the reception team and when I walked into the job I had no idea how fucked the place was. I ended up working 6 days a week, hours anything from 12 to 17 a day. I had no life whatsoever and couldn't sleep even when I had the time. Some of the best staff there were Italian and Latvian, and although the two people I have in mind didn't live on site, many did. They couldn't go anywhere as they had no transport, and they were marooned in the middle of nowhere, working long hours, on very little pay, in as you say, appalling accommodation.
Sadly many people did look down on them who I worked with, and they were ironically usually the ones with little education. They smoked 100 per day and shouted at anyone that got in their way. I became good friends with many of the European workers, at least the ones who weren't too frightened to speak, and were able to English for that matter. Many of them said the EU had fucked their countries back home, and they did talk about this a lot, even though this was a few years before the referendum (for the record). On the flip, they did say they were happy to work here and that they got a lot more money than they did back home. They could have a better standard of living here even, and also have some spare cash to send back home. Who can blame them either?
I lasted about 4 months before I couldn't take it any more. It was the Friday before Christmas and the general manager threw me up against the wall because I had to leave a meeting because we had two receptionists only, and one of which had walked off crying after he had shouted at her. The whole experience was horrendous, and I had to work so hard just for the whole night not to be a complete disaster. The GM then threatened to fire me, which was fucking unbelievable. I still want to kill him now.
Of course, the management of the hotels is to blame here, and the hospitality industry in general. British workers don't want to do these jobs, but the gap is filled generally by European workers that are happy to do them. Due to this luxury always being there to be exploited, industries such as this get away with it.
I think there is a mentality that because there are so many people over here from Eastern Europe who are low skilled, people just assume that they're losers, and that there are no exceptions. My missus gets asked if she's Polish all the time. Again, assumptions. She also has a masters but has really struggled to get a decent job. I think mainly for the reasons I stated in the first line of this paragraph.
Whilst there are racists that have used Brexit as a platform, I do also think this has been blown out or proportion by people that don't want it as well. There have been some reassuring comments towards my other half and I think if anything Brexit has woken up the issue and forced people to think of these people as human beings. Certainly so far we (she) has been lucky not to get any abuse if what other people say is true, and I do hope it stays that way, if not goes the other way, because I do think people in this country are cool with immigrants so long as it's not an overwhelming amount, which is where I think the waters may have been muddied.
I know that's a massive essay and half a life story, but I hope it makes sense to some extent!
