Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> It's conflating a bunch of things.

Not really. I am talking generally about this notion that we need to keep importing people.

> Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.

That is often repeated but I don't think that is quite as true as people make out. There aren't robots yet (or likely to be) stacking the supermarket shelves. Yes self service has taken most of the cashier jobs (not all btw).

> And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.

In other countries to emigrate there you need to have skills they need. When I moved abroad previously the company had to justify looking outside of the country to employ me. I don't understand how it can be justified that they can't find cleaning staff. BTW I employ a cleaner so I know roughly how much they cost.

> UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.

It doesn't matter whether it is small or not (I don't think it as small as you are making out). It shouldn't be happening. Also just because you don't like the people that are highlighting this issue, doesn't mean that the issue isn't important.

The reason why things are a mess is that nothing gets sorted out properly in the UK. We have had leadership failures now for years.






Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: