The Myth of “British Jobs”

The recent worker unrest at power stations, the Olympic site, and the BMW Mini factory could herald far more serious things to come. Gordon Brown knew when he made that soundbite of “British jobs for British workers” that he was at best misleading the people of Britain.

Under EU Law anyone from the 27 countries that now make up the EU has the right to seek and take work in any other member country. There is no way of denying workers from Portugal, Poland, Lithuania or Latvia the opportunity to take jobs in the UK or in N.E. Cambridgeshire for that matter.

Where the whole thing gets out of balance is that more “foreign” workers than local people are prepared to work at, or even below, the minimum wage through Agency work conditions.

Such is the competition for low labour costs among local businesses that the Agencies (gangmasters) are now cutting corners and committing tax fraud as well as other questionable practices. The outcome of this is of course is that it is the workers who are exploited.

Foreign workers are short-changed by having illegal deductions taken from their wages and local people are priced out of the job market for the simple reason that they are financially better off on benefits.

I never thought that I would say this but I now doubt that there is much benefit to the local community from those businesses employing agency labour. They pay rates and taxes directly to central Government and with such a high proportion of their workers being foreign workers a high proportion of the wages they pay out are repatriated in one way or another to other countries and not spent or invested in our local community.

Since many of these workers live in properties of “multiple occupation” the Council Tax  yield is lower than it otherwise would be per person and those local workers priced out of work on benefits claim Council Tax benefit, so a “double whammy” for our local councils.

I not only question whether foreign workers are beneficial to the UK economy as a whole, (additional costs for the NHS; housing; policing; and interpreting to name but a few), but I believe that denying working people basic employment rights, hard fought for over centuries, is simply a recipe for disaster.

The Government needs to wake up sharpish to these very real problems. If it insisted that all workers, agency or otherwise, enjoyed the same fundamental employment rights then at least we would have a level playing field and local people would be able to compete fairly for local jobs. British workers deserve nothing less.