Britain’s meat industry has warned it is facing ‘disaster’ as new rules to limit cheap foreign labour mean it will be forced to pay migrant workers £12,000 MORE than locals.
The price of meat could soar and businesses could go under due to laws that raise the salary threshold for skilled worker visas by nearly 50 per cent, from £26,200 to £38,700.
EU citizens currently make up 70 per cent of the UK’s abattoir staff as the industry has struggled to recruit British workers.
Annadore Barnes, of the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), said the government’s plan to stop the UK becoming swamped with cheap foreign labour has led to a disastrous ‘one size fits all’ policy.
British meat business are facing a looming ‘disaster’ over new rules that will force them to pay migrant workers nearly 50 per cent more, the industry has warned
She told Mail Online: ‘The meat industry has always paid migrant workers exactly the as British workers, starting at £26,500.
‘If we now have to pay migrants £38,700, they would be paid a lot more than their UK counterparts, and that would instantly trigger equal pay claims. It would cause chaos in the industry.
‘Companies would be crippled and food prices would be massively hiked, because it would just have to be passed on to the consumer.’
She said it has been very difficult to recruit British people for jobs in the meat industry as they are often difficult or unappealing.
‘You’re working in very cold conditions and it’s quite physical,’ she said. ‘It’s slaughter and and meat-cutting, so it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.’
EU citizens currently make up 70 per cent of the UK’s abattoir staff as the industry has struggled to recruit British workers (Stock picture)
As well as destroying the meat industry, it would also ‘decimate’ the UK dairy industry, which relies on domestic abattoirs, the BMPA said.
Migrant butchers are also more expensive to recruit than domestic workers because it costs an extra £10,000 to £15,000 per person to bring them in.
The new rules started in April, but so far the meat industry has not yet started hiring migrants on the new inflated salaries.
Just before the rules kicked in, business ‘went on a massive recruitment drive’ and are currently well-staffed, Ms Barnes said.
But the potential ‘disaster’ is looming as workers start dropping out and moving on.
‘We simply cannot afford to take on migrant workers, and with the UK’s domestic labour shortage, we are left with few options,’ she said.
‘We are going to lobby government and hope they rethink the Migration Advisory Committee’s advice on being more granular about how they impose these immigration rules on different industries.
‘It can’t be a one-size-fits-all policy because it just isn’t a one-size-fits-all world. In the care sector, the government are quite happily not applying the rule.
‘All we can do is just keep talking to them about how it works in this particular industry and encourage them to be more granular about how they how they come up with these rules.’
The BMPA said abattoirs could be forced to scale down, which would have a knock on effect on British livestock farming and food security.
Abattoir numbers have already declined from around 2,500 in the 1970s to just 203 in the UK today.
Losing more abattoirs would be ‘anti-growth’ and make the UK more dependent on imported foods, the group warned, adding: ‘It will expose the UK to risks beyond our control like wars, climate change-driven shortages and export bans where supplies are suddenly cut-off.’