The public’s reaction to Pick For Britain Campaign
On May 19th, Prince Charles released a video to ask furloughed workers and students in the UK to pick fruit and vegetables. Those interested could sign up on a website called Pick For Britain which was announced by Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, at the daily government briefing.
Due to the coronavirus, many of the seasonal workers from Europe that would normally be making the trip to the UK to bring the harvest in are not coming this year. According to the government 70,000 seasonal workers need to be recruited to fill in the gap.
In order to gauge the reaction to the new campaign, I looked at all of the tweets that were written in the 48 hours after the campaign was announced with the words “Pick for Britain” in them. After running a sentiment analysis of those 11,948 tweets, the response looked like this:
As an American, this surprised me quite a lot. I did not expect it to be so positive. The notion that a Prince, whose entire life is paid for by the public, should call on those who are in dire straits to risk their lives picking fruit for minimum wage, something he will never have to do, to be seen as positive is completely alien to me. However, YouGov ran a poll on May 21st that interviewed 1,934 people with the following question and it yielded similar results.
The traffic was so high on the Pick for Britain site that day that it crashed after the news briefing. It is remarkable how many citizens want to sign up to lend a hand during this time of need.
If you are thinking about signing up for Pick for Britain, however, before you should consider the following three things.
- Read the fine print, because on that website at the bottom is the following notice:
All the way at the bottom it reads “Pick for Britain and AHDB have no responsibility and/or liability whatsoever for any third party’s obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.” What is the Modern Slavery Act 2015?Well, essentially it protects people against “slavery, servitude, and forced or compulsory labor.” And the very idea that the government is washing their hands of all responsibility of this law is outrageous. To ask people to help and then fail to protect them through a government website is something that needs rectifying immediately.
2. UK Government Farming Guidelines
Be aware of the new Covid-19 social distancing guidelines for picking fruit and vegetables and make sure whoever hires you does too. Know your rights.
Also be aware that some farms are having their seasonal workers quarantine together for months. You may be quarantining with strangers rather than your family during this time.
3. If you are furloughed, you will be unable to resume your old work during your farming contract. So if your boss calls you back, you will be stuck.
