It seems that it’s not in the nature of us seasonal types to have a lot of interest in current affairs, possibly because we’re too busy chasing next season’s job or working out whether we can afford the flight back from the last one. In fact, I seem to be a bit of an outlier just by knowing what the EU is in the first place, judging by the baffled looks I get when I ask people what they plan to do post-Brexit if they can’t work here any more.
Definitely a man just asking to be punched in the face. Repeatedly.
‘Oh, they’ll work something out’, they say vaguely. Or ‘I’m OK, I’m on a French contract’. Or ‘well I’ll just get a work visa’. Or even ‘they can’t afford to lose all the Brits, they’ll make an exception’, possibly the most deluded version out there of the already tenuous ‘they need us more than we need them’ argument.
So if you don’t want this winter and next summer to be your last seasons before you’re all forced to take up sprout-picking on a rainy island which appears at the moment to be inhabited by a large number of racist pensioners with the collective IQ of a gerbil, it’s time to start paying attention.
An outfit calling itself Seasonal Businesses in Travel, which appears to be a hastily-formed association of panicked tour ops, has just estimated a loss of 25,000 seasonal jobs unless someone comes up with a way of letting us all stay. Chalet hosts, reps, ski techs, campsite couriers, kids club reps, watersports instructors ……. that’s your job they’re talking about.
And presumably that’s before we look at all the people working for non-tour op businesses – the bar staff, receptionists, chefs, transfer drivers, tradesmen, lifties, ticket sales monkeys, etc etc you name it, working for local businesses.
If you’re working for a UK-based company and being paid in sterling, you’re doing it as a posted worker on an A1 portable document, which allows people from one EU member state to work temporarily in another one without having all the faff of getting involved with another country’s tax and social security system. It only works if your home nation is an EU member, which is the reason we’re not knee deep in Aussies and Kiwis – they can’t do what you do without jumping through so many hoops that it’s virtually impossible.
Kiwi – not a common alpine bird.
If you have the good fortune to be working for a local company offering proper wages and civilised hours, then hurrah. But you can only do that because your home nation is an EU member, which means you can apply for a job anywhere in Europe and the most difficult hurdle you face is persuading some hatchet-faced Credit Agricole employee to let you open a bank account.
Once we wave goodbye, your A1 becomes irrelevant, so chances are your tour op job will just disappear. Along with the tour op itself, in quite a few cases. And you can apply for as many local jobs as you like, but you’re no longer an EU national, so before they can take you on, employers will have to apply for a work permit. Which is likely to involve them advertising the post locally for a set period of time and then proving to the authorities that they can’t get a native to do it and have to recruit elsewhere. You think anyone’s going to bother going through that palaver for a seasonal chef or a barman? Think again.
And I wouldn’t go pinning my hopes on David and Theresa coming up with some kind of special arrangement either. The painful truth is that they don’t give a toss about you and your pathetic little life. You aren’t bankers, millionaires or Tory party donors. Chances are you don’t even bother to vote, even if you’ve managed to be in one place long enough to register or organise a postal or proxy vote.
The French aren’t likely to see the whole thing as a tragedy either. In fact the ESF is rubbing its hands with glee even as we speak, in anticipation of an exodus of British ski instructors, something they’ve been trying to engineer for 20 years.
My hovercraft s full of eels.
I know we like to think the Alps would go spectacularly bust without the British skier, but have you seen the number of East Europeans kicking about the pistes recently? There are plenty of alternative emerging markets out there, and resorts are already chasing them. Chalet owners might have a bit of a hard time finding tenants for a while, but if 2Alpes is anything to go by, there’s an army of Hungarians out there ready to take up the slack. Besides which, what sort of skier gives it up just because he can’t have his favourite catered chalet? They’ll emigrate into self catered apartments and eat takeaway pizza instead, and while they might grumble a bit to start with, after three seasons they won’t even remember the chalet thing.
It's All Downhill From Here 
“Chalet holiday? What’s that then? I just do airbnb these days…”
Ooh, aren’t you modern! 😀
Welcome back! (Not to Blighty but online!) You`ve got the situation summed up perfectly! In the Tarentaise I worked with the ESF usually with the Flocons, one of my jobs was to stop the loonies who thought that a green run was a speed event as we went back to the station! The one time I worked for a day with one of the interloper Brit ski schools I reallised that they had no idea how to treat children! I`m on the side of the ESF on that one! Les 2 Alpes, I ski in summer with Italians and in winter with Romanians, bring on Snow Fest! All of them wonderful company and the Hungarians are no problem either but then of course having English, German, Italian and Hungarian blood I`m not a typical Brit and am glad I left long ago. I also have a French pension which will augment if my Brit pensions sink too far with the disasterous effects of Brexit on the pound, It seems that a lot of the British yoof still don`t understand what has been done to them by the pensioners and the the Tory Scum, xenophobia running wild.
Some might go self-catered, but chalet holidays are so easy (transfers included, no need to cook, no need to clean, no need to think – everything is organised!) that I can’t see the Brits letting go of that ease, even if it gets a bit more expensive. As you say, other nationalities might simply move in to those empty chalets, and some might perhaps see the value in an existing market of Brits who will pay to make their stay easier.
Or possibly the likes of Skiworld will start employing underpaid Poles instead of underpaid Brits. Presumably they’d have to open some kind of token Polish office in order to pretend they weren’t a British TO.
Hah! Yep,