Recent letters suggesting a “humane” solution to our employment woes would be to exploit asylum seekers as a conveniently available “resource” within the NHS, food processing and care homes has one massive flaw: it maintains our reliance upon a minimum wage, “gig economy” underclass who often exist as agency workers.
Clearly the return of so many EU workers to their own countries has created a vacuum in the availability of cheap labour, but surely the crushing reality is that too many businesses and vital services are kept afloat and are only viable when there are plenty of cheap minimum-wage gig economy drones to prop up their operations.
The uncomfortable serendipity of a situation where we imagine the desperate lost souls seeking refuge will love picking potatoes, wiping bottoms and cleaning our hospitals for rock bottom wages seems lost on many, and leaves me very uneasy.
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