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British Jobs - 1/30/2009 10:25:58 PM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		Well, it looks like our illustrious leader Prime Minister Brown has shot himself in the ass

Just to show when politicians use sound bites to generate support (and confidence), it can come back to haunt them. I just wonder what exactly he is going to do in this situation. According to his Pledge in November 2007, the workers who are striking are justified in doing so. The trouble is in this economically depressed existence we all now live in, the strike is now spreading to other industries in support, so what was being created will now be less.

I wonder how long Mr Brown will hold his office.


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RE: British Jobs - 1/30/2009 10:35:00 PM   
MzMia


Posts: 5333
Joined: 7/30/2004
Status: offline 		Anerin, please don't start any doom and gloom threads.
Thank you


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RE: British Jobs - 1/30/2009 10:42:44 PM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		I don't see it as doom and gloom, all I see is the people responding to a useless prime minister, they are doing what he said, even though he pinched the sound bite from the nationalists, I think we would be better off if he were gone, this I see is just another nail in the coffin of his political career.

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RE: British Jobs - 1/30/2009 10:44:28 PM   
MzMia


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Joined: 7/30/2004
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

I don't see it as doom and gloom, all I see is the people responding to a useless prime minister, they are doing what he said, even though he pinched the sound bite from the nationalists, I think we would be better off if he were gone, this I see is just another nail in the coffin of his political career.


I understand, I don't see any of the threads I start as "gloom and doom" threads, either.
No one has to justify why they start threads, and we are all free to skip over threads
we find depressing, trivial, silly or just plain stupid.

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RE: British Jobs - 1/30/2009 11:24:15 PM   
ALAstella


Posts: 253
Joined: 12/3/2008
Status: offline 		What has this issue got to do with Gordon Brown?

The problem of migrant workers taking local jobs has been an issue ever since the Maastricht Treaty back in 1992. As an example the Germans had issues with British workers for being prepared to work for less than the Germans.

This is more a problem to do with Tony Blair's government rather than Gordon Brown. Up until 2005 I was living in Poland, and I can remember clearly the media campaign encouraging Poles to travel to the UK to seek employment. I can even remember headlines like '500,000 jobs for Poles in Great Britain' which graced the Polish press back in 2003.

This is the fall out for the 'free market' and Western businesses destroying the economies of those Eastern European member states in the years 1989-2004 in their search for new markets and increased consumer spending. The plan was very simple, get as many Eastern Europeans into debt and increased consumer spending as you can so as to create a cheap labour source.

In the late 1990's private universities and colleges mushroomed all over Poland whilst their job market was shrinking and there was a lot of media and social pressure to be educated and get a degree. Universities started teaching extra-mural courses at weekends and evenings, and all of a sudden lots of young people were studying.

Ever wondered why you need a CV, motivational letter and (ideally) a degree to get any job in the UK now? That's thanks to a woman called Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz who presided over the World Bank in London who started the trend of employers to demand documents and CVs from people seeking jobs.

The Poles, like the Lithuanians, Czechs, Romanians and Bulgarians have for many years been groomed as a source of cheap labour. Many of those Polish migrant workers did increase their consumer spending and got themselves into debt while their industries were either closed down or sold off and Western business took over. Unemployment in Poland rose to as much as 60% in some areas and for many young people there was no other choice but to go West.

Then you had the media stories in our press about how English workers are lazy, not well educated, and less competitive than Polish workers.

Yes of course British workers are less competitive. Whereas you've often got up to 3 migrant workers sharing a rented room, British workers do have families to feed and homes to maintain. This means that Eastern European migrant workers are in a far better position to accept minimum wage work than British workers.

Less well educated? Hmmm. I know I can buy a Polish university degree for around £500 from one or two street markets. Failing that I can 'employ' someone to attend my course for me using my proof of ID, and if I 'buy' an MA dissertation from the Internet I can also save myself the trouble of studying. This isn't widespread in Poland, but it happens, especially in the more private of universities and colleges. Did I tell you about when I worked for one of these 'private' academies to teach English and was paid not to turn up for classes?

Somehow I just don't see me going up to Portobello Road in London on Saturday and picking myself up a nice law degree from Southampton University.

I'm sorry but I can't see how Gordon Brown can be held responsible for lots of migrant workers being allowed to undercut lots of British workers. What about the greed of British employers for example?

You see, they are the ones who are now relying heavily on employment agencies, they are the ones who are employing the migrant workers over British workers. And yes, this does include a lot of professional British women who are paying as little as £100 a week for full time housekeepers and nannies - or girls from Eastern Europe, some of whom can hardly speak English.

Where this government is going wrong is that they are not policing the minimum wage and haven't introduced any form of employment protection, which Blair was promising to do in 1997 but which hasn't happened. I know of a Spanish woman who was paid £3 an hour to work in a restaurant, and I know of Bulgarian and Ukrainian cleaners earning as little as £2 an hour.

I have a friend, a young Brazilian guy.. he's street homeless here in London. He was a migrant worker once but he gave it all up when he couldn't afford to live anywhere other than a cheap backpackers hostel in North London, which he assures me is how most migrant workers now have to live to survive on the low pay they are earning in their jobs.

However the problems with the Poles will sort themselves out soon. The Polish economy is picking up and there's now a labour shortage in most Polish cities. There's also elections coming up which means that the Kaczynski twins will soon be out of office together with their extreme right wing ultra-conservative politics, and quite a lot of Poles are actually leaving and returning to Poland.

And Gordon Brown will carry on regardless.

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 2:40:56 PM   
Vendaval


Posts: 10297
Joined: 1/15/2005
Status: offline 		Wow.  I do not live in the UK but can compare the Eastern European migrant worker situation with what the US has with migrant workers from Latin America.
 
Stella, as always, you are a wealth of inspiration and history. 

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 4:28:38 PM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		Could it be the migrant worker is the scapegoat for a country's ills, when really, the problem is elsewhere. The employer seeks a work force that he can pay a low wage, not always to maximise profits, but in some cases to make a business viable, and there part of the economy. But what has caused a situation where the preference is for those that accept less for their efforts, where could we point the finger of blame ?

But as to immigrant labour, our ancestry betrays us, for most of in the western world, we owe our present existence to the efforts of our ancestors.

The western world is a world of immigrants, we have all moved from place to place seeking a better existence, are we right to deny those that seek now.

Immigrants are not to blame for our present difficulties, perhaps we should look more towards thaose that made immigration attractive.


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Everything we are is the result of what we have thought, the mind is everything, what we think, we become - Guatama Buddha

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 4:31:55 PM   
colouredin


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

Immigrants are not to blame for our present difficulties, perhaps we should look more towards thaose that made immigration attractive.



Or perhaps we should look at the mentality of british society. Work seems to be a bad word for many people and also we should possibly look at why people with little to no skill hold out for skilled jobs rather than doing the less fun ones. Maybe we need to work on the british work ethic. Maybe we should stop encouraging the idea that we can always blame someone else.

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 4:49:55 PM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		I can't help but think the old ideals of class comes into this somewhere. Of old, three classes, lower, middle and upper, are they still here or defunct ? Maybe I am one of the new, though from a working class background, I refuse to be defined, my work is not a measure of me.

Gone are the days of ; '' I know my place '', perhaps it is though the past working class know their position as a position of power through unions, but the unions now largely toothless and dissolved, the working class seeks to define itself.

The problem we have in Britain, I feel is a British problem, a problem caused by ideals and mentalities that are from the past and belong in the past.

At one time this country was awash with craftsmen, they were much as ten a penny, but as with the change of times the crafts died out, those that lingered and lasted through dedication to the art of craft, last until this day. Their status of old, the working class of old, now find themselves in a situation where they can command the pay of their desire, not the pay at one time imposed on them, though still working class as the old defines, they are now an elitist set amongst the rest.


< Message edited by Aneirin -- 1/31/2009 4:56:27 PM >

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 4:52:17 PM   
colouredin


Posts: 4279
Joined: 2/2/2007
Status: offline 		Umm Im confused about what you think the problem is to be honest, is it the mean old immigrants taking all our jobs or is it the working classes being too good for the jobs the immigrants do?

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 5:09:05 PM   
Aneirin


Posts: 6121
Joined: 3/18/2006
From: Tamaris
Status: offline 		I would feel the latter, as pride seems to play much in the employment of the British.

A job maybe just a job, a trade of labour for goods or money's so a person can live, but as it is we spend most of our lives in employment of sorts, we come to understand we are defined by what the work is that we do.

As I believe the modern Briton is perhaps like myself, in a situation where we refuse to be defined, perhaps it is if by trade, and for example, dish washer, we refuse to be defined by that.

I also feel there is much from the past, of Lords and Ladies, in great houses, sitting on their arses whilst an army of servants attends to their needs. Memories of a time gone by, perhaps it is the  will of the average Briton that pride does not come in the serving of others that do nought but sit on their arse.




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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 5:11:28 PM   
Raechard


Posts: 3513
Joined: 3/10/2007
From: S.E. London U.K.
Status: offline 		Work: considering you spend the majority of your life doing it, you'd better enjoy it.

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RE: British Jobs - 1/31/2009 10:50:42 PM   
ALAstella


Posts: 253
Joined: 12/3/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

I can't help but think the old ideals of class comes into this somewhere. Of old, three classes, lower, middle and upper, are they still here or defunct ? Maybe I am one of the new, though from a working class background, I refuse to be defined, my work is not a measure of me.



This is where we differ somewhat from the rest of the 'first world' which is now struggling to come to terms with the reality that they are no longer the superpowers they once were but are becoming more post-industrial second class nations and economies.

Part of me feels that one of the issues is that the British feel that they have been getting it on a plate for a long time, but now they have to roll up their sleeves and put in some hard graft like everyone else. You can see something similar happening on the other side of the Atlantic.

The thing is blaming politicians, governments and political systems is in itself something of a trap. It would be very easy to point the finger at the Thatcher governments of the 1980's who sold off our industries because they weren't making enough profit while persuading us to take out credit and start living beyond our means because our salvation was always going to be the service based economy.

It's like all these right wing nutters who blame everything on socialism and see socialism as the necessary evil. The thing is, socialism is working in various places in the world and if it was as useless as they make it out to be there'd be much more poverty, crime and warfare in this world.

You see, you also had this American guy called Bill Gates who said all you need for a decent computer is 640k of memory. I don't wish to debate whether Windows Vista can operate on just 640k of memory or not, but in the past 30 years we have seen so many advances in technology which have totally transformed the way we work and live.

It's clear to me that we are still experiencing the effects of these technological advances, half of society is unsettled, as are most economies, and I have had the distinct impression that our politicians have been trying to find a solution mainly by trial and error.

It's not just the migrant workers who are the scapegoats, but also the working class in Britain which appears to have grown. When I left for Poland back in the early 1990's there was a clear difference between the lifestyle of someone working and someone who was jobless. Today apart from the lack of an employer in many cases you can hardly see any difference.

However the main problem as I see it is this insane obsession with growth and productivity which gets so many people into a cycle of earning and spending 'for the sake of the economy' which appears to be benefitting nobody else other than corporations, big business, and organized criminals, oh and the media. It is the perception of people as nothing more than human resources and dividing them up into profitable and unprofitable which encourages them to compete against one another.

In less than 12 years' time we're going to get those who were born in the 'baby boom' reaching the age of 60 and qualifying for some sort of a pension. This means that for the first time ever you are going to have a larger population of pensioners than working people. Now the majority of these people are expecting to be able to retire and live off a pension. Where is the money going to come from?

Let's not forget that thanks to cuts in education and community services in the past some of the younger generations of the working population are barely employable now, an it can be assumed that unless they receive some sort of training and education they're going to be unemployable by the time they reach their 40's. The younger generation are no less intelligent than anyone else, but they haven't had the opportunities in education and community initiatives that we once had.

We still have a pretty rigid class system and there is as we speak a certain amount of class struggle and class warfare going on at the moment in Britain. This is the problem I would assume the government are facing at this moment as I feel there needs to be a period of redistribution, of wealth, of skills, of services, if our economy is to have any hope of recovering.

It is insane IMHO to expect any sort of economic recovery when most of the working population are either not working, struggling in low paid jobs, not working in their field or vocation or working on temporary jobs and contracts.

It was also insane for the Blair government not to impose restrictions on migrant workers from the 10 EU accession states from Central and Eastern Europe, especially when the number of Poles aged 18-28 made up for 40% of the entire workforce in the European Union of people aged 18-28. It is precisely this generation of Polish migrant workers who are leaving jobs in agriculture and food processing in Britain.

They are leaving because the strengthening of the dollar against sterling has also caused the Polish zloty to strengthen against sterling, which - as many are maintaining households and families back in Poland - has led to a significant drop in their spending power. The problem is that the pay and conditions for these jobs is so shitty that the farmers and employers are going to have real problems finding people to replace them, and you can bet that any increase in wages offered will be offset by increases in the price of produce and products.

It's this mindset, that the worker or the consumer who has to shoulder the burden for the economic woes and recovery, which is holding us back. We have a bitterly divided society along class lines when we really need a unified society of people working together.

The government is trying to tackle the issues and has recently reformed the welfare benefits system by replacing Job Seekers Allowance, Income Support and Incapacity Benefit with the Employment Support Allowance redistributing welfare funds to people who need it and taking it away from those who don't. However it still needs to reform the employment market IMHO so that people are able to find sustainable employment.



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When you don't understand the reason why, that's love.

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RE: British Jobs - 2/1/2009 12:33:15 AM   
JustDarkness


Posts: 1461
Joined: 7/25/2008
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quote:

Could it be the migrant worker is the scapegoat for a country's ills, when really, the problem is elsewhere.

the crisis is just to much for everyone and people seek something to blame.

here we had a flood of polish workers..and it is correcting itself...because cheap is not always better ;)


< Message edited by JustDarkness -- 2/1/2009 12:34:56 AM >

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 11:57:10 AM   
RealityLicks


Posts: 1615
Joined: 10/23/2007
Status: offline 		An interesting range of views, although in some cases, I'm at a loss trying to discover what connection they have to this case.  These EU workers are not here under cheaper wages or poorer conditions than British workers would be, because that would break EU law.  New Labour would have loved to be seen smacking an errant employer back into line but they can't - because they've apparently followed the rules.                                                                                                                                                                                                                 So it's got no link to importing cheaper labour or other sinister plans and its more to do with British management inefficency costing our workforce a contract.  But I know people who have worked civil engineering projects in other EU countries - they weren't obstructed in those jobs so we can't complain now.                                                                                                                                                  Cuts both ways.

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 12:08:57 PM   
JustDarkness


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quote:

These EU workers are not here under cheaper wages or poorer conditions than British workers would be, because that would break EU law


the EU law is that foreign workers..work on the rules set by their home country...not the country they work in.
That means in some cases foreign workers do only need the safety equipment that is perscribed in their country...mostly that means..nothing..and therefor they can work cheaper/faster.

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 12:10:32 PM   
RealityLicks


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Status: offline 		I believe you're wrong there, as the OP's article states.

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 12:11:56 PM   
T1981


Posts: 557
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Status: offline 		*thinks Stella's got a good head for this sort of discussion*

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 12:12:17 PM   
JustDarkness


Posts: 1461
Joined: 7/25/2008
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quote:

ORIGINAL: RealityLicks

I believe you're wrong there, as the OP's article states.


I will try to find an article about it. I just saw it on German and Dutch tv.
back asap

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/consleg/1971/R/01971R1408-20060428-en.pdf

page 12 and on
It depends on what kind of worker you are..how long..what job....
damn this EU crap is hard to read..lol
Some have to work according the local law..and a few not.
My english is not good enough to understand all.


< Message edited by JustDarkness -- 2/2/2009 12:26:15 PM >

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RE: British Jobs - 2/2/2009 5:29:25 PM   
Politesub53


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quote:

ORIGINAL: ALAstella

It's like all these right wing nutters who blame everything on socialism and see socialism as the necessary evil. The thing is, socialism is working in various places in the world and if it was as useless as they make it out to be there'd be much more poverty, crime and warfare in this world.


Any chance of actually naming a country where this is successful ?  The ANC tried and look at South Africa and it`s crime rate.

quote:


It was also insane for the Blair government not to impose restrictions on migrant workers from the 10 EU accession states from Central and Eastern Europe, especially when the number of Poles aged 18-28 made up for 40% of the entire workforce in the European Union of people aged 18-28. It is precisely this generation of Polish migrant workers who are leaving jobs in agriculture and food processing in Britain.


Firstly Blair couldnt ban workers from EU nations, as you well know.
Secondly any stats to back up the claim about 18-28 year olds. Considering EU populations rates this seems unlikely.

The Op was right to be critical of Browns " British jobs for British workers " Comment. Under EU law this was never going to be possible. Just like " No more boom and bust " ( I fell off the chair laughing at that one ) It is just another good soundbite for TV and no substance from Brown.

Todays problems are all directly traceable to the sub-prime markets and the Banks making financial instruments that they didnt understand. The way I see it is the banks wont lend to each other, due to lack of confidence, hence Employers cant afford to invest or take on more workers. The solution is to either nationalise the banks, or bail them out. At present they are trying to patch things up piecemeal and hope for the best.

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