GMB Branch secretary wrote:
Streetcars post the speach and i;ll comment, our views on the industry are of course that the workers within it need to take part in the democratic process.A union is its membership if the membership were to support a call for ANY policy on immigration that would of course be what ae fight for, but if your not in it you cant influence it!!!
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The Mail on Sunday
Let us rewind the cameras to before the last election. The parties are about to issue their manifestos. What would have been the reaction if Tony Blair had included the following passage in Labour’s manifesto?
We intend to pursue an open borders policy. We will welcome all comers from the new EU accession countries. We intend to allow unlimited access to our labour market even if other European countries refuse to open their borders. We know that this policy will depress wages, make it difficult for students to find holiday jobs while ensuring that it is impossible to move one million people from incapacity benefit into work and persuade an additional 600,000 single parents to take jobs. Yet we believe the gains outweigh the losses.
There would have been uproar. And in this uproar we would have had a very good debate about the levels of immigration into this country. But would the Government have coasted home with a majority of almost 70? I doubt it.
But the suppression of wages and the disappearance of traditional holiday jobs have already come about. People who have worked all their lives, now find it more difficult to move to their next job. Graduates find their hands tied behind their backs when they seek jobs against new arrivals who can offer similar qualifications and work experience as well.
Of course employers have never had it so good. Merseyside agencies have been established bringing over workers from East European countries. When a Liverpool company needs new bus drivers it contacts one of the agencies for a delivery of 50 Polish bus drivers. Contrast this behaviour with Asda. Opening a new Liverpool store requiring 230 staff, Asda took 200 claimants off benefit, trained them, and gave them work in the store.
An email from Merseyside is typical. A mother writes that her husband has never been out of work for almost thirty years. He is a plasterer. But gaining the next job becomes ever more difficult.
Likewise with her sons. Both are at university. Both have taken out loans. Both of them had factored in working during the long vacation. Both of them have found this year that those jobs do not exist. They have been taken by immigrant workers.
A different tale comes from the North East. A postman writes to say that after 20 years’ service he was made redundant. He believed that all this talk about finding it difficult to find jobs were mere ‘paper talk’. He writes that he did not realise that he was reading about how he would be treated. After 12 months he is still searching for a reasonably paid job.
There is a longer term impact on wage levels on allowing an open door policy. With Britain’s population ageing I thought that, with labour becoming more scarce, care workers, and the whole army of people whose efforts help make the world go around with a smile on its face, would begin to reap more decent rewards.
But the opposite is happening. Such workers find their position undermined by this huge wave from Eastern Europe. Wages are held down and, in some cases, undercut. Frail old people in residential homes, desperately trying to keep hold of their memories, find that care workers can hardly speak English. One of the reasons why these workers are in this country is to learn our language. A great ideal. But what is the impact on somebody whose memory keeps moving into the twilight?
Do immigrants do jobs the English won’t do? David, a care worker from London, writes: ‘This is another fallacy. If they bothered to look north they will see English people doing care work, sweeping the streets, emptying dustbins, working in supermarkets. The reason that foreigners are doing these job is because a huge proportion of the population of London are not English’.
There are of course those who see a sectional interest in keeping the door open to any number of immigrants. Some of the trade unions are campaigning hard to maintain the open door policy. They are spending significant resources recruiting people from the old communist block. And do a good deal by them. But the trade union view is a partial one. It is right for them to promote their sectional interest, but it is also right to question whether the policy is good for the whole country.
Likewise the Catholic Church see a renaissance. Parishes that were going to close now find churches bulging at the seams with newcomers. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is absolutely right to point to the advantages that immigrants bring. Likewise he is dead right in insisting that once people are here they should be fully respected. But there is also a big political question on the numbers of immigrants that should be allowed in at any one time.
The Government believed in 2004 that there would be less than thirteen thousand new arrivals from the accession countries. The total turned out in a little over a year to be approaching half a million. Add to this total those immigrants from other parts of the world and, for 2004, the total reached almost one million.
At the same time a third of a million Brits left this country. That indicates a change in one in ten of the entire population within the life of a five year parliament. I do not believe that change on this scale is either desirable or sustainable.
An emailer from North London details that his neighbourhood has turned into a dormitory for young Eastern Europeans almost overnight. ‘The public has never been consulted on this and the implications for social cohesion, let alone national identity, are being wilfully ignored.’
Should the Government continue the same open door policy when Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union next January? It is a decision the Government are in the process of making.
All the other countries, bar Sweden, Ireland and Britain, refused to allow free access last time around. The Government this time should only agree free access to British jobs for Romanian and Bulgarian workers if all, repeat all, other European countries agree the same policy and implement it.
Thats the article G M B . In liverpool we still have thouands out of work . Unions here are activly , encoraging imigrant workers . It makes no sence . Including the G M B . What say you? . streetcars
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