Red Faction said:
i think if the capitalist state of britain keeps letting them in it takes power AWAY from the workers
they aren't unionised, so they undermine the "british" workers
lets unionise them then. three-quarteres of the population aren't in unions, it's not just new immigrants. in fact, as we've seen at the Houses of Parliament, new immigrants can be amngst the keenest to unionise.
clearly it cant
it requires the country (read government) to work on their behalf,
post war governments strengthened the unions by immigration, look at Bill Morris- classic example
later governments (thatcher +) colluded with the CBI to undermine the unions, again through immigration
immigration was far from the main way in which thatcher destroyed the unions. a very minor role indeed (except through
blatant racist divide and rule measures) up until the late eighties, at the earliest.
why would immigrant workers respect a british picket- if the reason they came over here was to work
they are playing them off against each other
the only real losers (apart from the philipinos without medical care) are british nurses who the market has forced to work for a lower wage
becaus they also want to be accepted into local communities, and feel vaguely welcome. they arent told they are going to act as 'scabs', why should they want to?
there does need to be action against 'poaching'. I would support - as well as open borders (see later) - opportunities for philipino (and other) nurses to come over and get some proper experience - not just the shit jobs - in a well funded health service, learning skills they could take back to the philipinnes. in fact one of the main problems of the immigration system is that if you come here to work, you must never leave, or you will never be allowed back in to work again. hence the loss to the phillipino (i'm spelling that differently every time, i know) communities. also, there should be exchange schemes promoted, and decent levels of pay all round. those a re the key issues, surely?
i think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one
i think britains ethical foreign policy has to come ahead of the free market
and depriving poor philipinos of medical care is hugely unethical
cant see the workers of the world uniting any time soon
altho with this new superunion...
apologies to all philipino nurses out there
well, see abve for the general issues there.
on the wider issue - of course the capitalist class attempt to use migration (
not just immigration, lets not make this a one sided discussion) to their own ends. that's what they do with everything! but that's al it is - we should be demanding equal rights,
absolutely equal rights for all migrant workers, not be working out ways to see how many we want to take.
Of course we should be demanding extra resources for the area's migrants tend to be dumped in, as we should for all area's, for all workers, wherever they come from (including immigrants from the poor parts of Britain attracted to higher wages in 'the city'). Much of this discussion reminds me of stuff I read about women entering the workforce in the late eighteenth century, and how many workers ended up backing a reactinary 'keep women in the home' movement, rather than fighting for equal rights for all workers.
I think the key section in patty's contribution wasn't the one you quoted RF, but this -
Does the workers movment stop them, on that grounds that it leaves the Phillipines with out it's nurses and/Or it drives down wages in Brittain? If it had the power to do that independenly then it would also have the power to damand a fully funded health service, built with a fully funded education and training sector.
quite.
pedant
