danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
Really? It's all about Eva.
Massive rises in unemployment: Do we need to talk about Eva?
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
Dr Dolittle
Slightly loony
You think the employers pay immigrant workers less than they would pay British workers? Do you have any evidence to support that assumption? You realise that would be illegal?
When unemployment is high and there aren't enough jobs for everyone, the ones who get the jobs, at any level, are the more aspirational, organised, positive-thinking, skilled ones. People who emigrate generally are like that - disorganised, negative, unskilled people stay at home. That's why it tends to be the immigrants who get the entry level jobs.
little_legs
Поехали!
Eva is Armenian 
As for the solution, suck it up and vote for the Communist party.
As for the solution, suck it up and vote for the Communist party.
kittyP
Pluviophile
Eva is Armenian
As for the solution, suck it up and vote for the Communist party.
Which one? One of them parties with hyphenated letters encased in round brackets at the end of its name? New Thingy Whatchamacallit Unified Communist Party Whatever (M-L).
elbows
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't say its a blind spot. It is an area where multiple heavy aspects intersect, and when trying to guard against some of the most repugnant forms of divide-and-conquer, scapegoating and ignorance, some of the other issues can get buried.
The left does have potential solutions, but in order to avoid the terrible shite the issue must not be tacked head on in a vacuum.
Im sure that in a better world, people would like the freedom of movement, but coupled with a situation whereby nobody is forced to go to another country to find a job, or one that comes with reasonable pay, conditions & rights.
Personally, I can't stand the manner in which you discuss issues such as this one, and issues arising from muslim members of this nation. You play right into the great trap of obsessing over our differences, what separates us rather than unites us, and that makes you a tool for ugly forces. So don't expect people to apologise for pussyfooting around such issues, they are just looking at a broader range of problems from a different angle.
little_legs
Поехали!
You must have a party which if and when it came to power it would nationalise BT, British Gas, National Rail, NHS. Xenophobic treelover should vote for that party.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Its not so much a failing of the left, as it is one of the more cunning and hard-to-escape from aspects of capitalisms globalisation project. They make us compete in ways that undermine what should be our shared interests. To overcome this requires quite the opposite of your approach.
chemn
shmemn
Reverse xenophobia?!? I was just stating fact.
It's a fact which backs up the opinion that foreign workers get jobs because they have a better work ethic, but it's still a fact.
elbows
Well-Known Member
In a nutshell, looking at the problem from one particular angle:
There are not enough jobs here, or almost anyplace else. There is a global jobs crisis.
Protectionism of various sorts is a risk in this environment.
The challenge is how to replace a dodgy global system with an alternative. If its left to individual nations then interesting & positive things can still happen, but there are many extremely ugly risks from unwinding a large global capitalist project in a chaotic, nationalistic way.
There are some secondary issues involving how we bring up a good chunk of our children, their attitudes, skills, expectations etc. Much of this stems from the changing needs of capitalism for workers of various different sorts, and the ways in which past hideous adjustments in the labour force have been dealt with in decades past. Workers in plenty of other countries have had a slightly different set of problems, influences and options, and capitalism has exploited this for all its worth.
There are not enough jobs here, or almost anyplace else. There is a global jobs crisis.
Protectionism of various sorts is a risk in this environment.
The challenge is how to replace a dodgy global system with an alternative. If its left to individual nations then interesting & positive things can still happen, but there are many extremely ugly risks from unwinding a large global capitalist project in a chaotic, nationalistic way.
There are some secondary issues involving how we bring up a good chunk of our children, their attitudes, skills, expectations etc. Much of this stems from the changing needs of capitalism for workers of various different sorts, and the ways in which past hideous adjustments in the labour force have been dealt with in decades past. Workers in plenty of other countries have had a slightly different set of problems, influences and options, and capitalism has exploited this for all its worth.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I do not apologise for hating haters and their ugly selection of debating weapons. I'd gladly upset and insult individual people such as yourself a thousand times over rather than stoop to a political stance that leaves entire groups of people open to hate. I do not expect utopia, but neither will I applaud those who go off down a weird path and end up following some worm. You've fallen so far in the years I've read your posts here that its not even funny. Shame on you.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Not just foreign workers, the desire that many people have to work is a key foundation upon which systems of exploitation can be built.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Retaining hope no matter the circumstances, and having a much broader sense of which humans deserve to be helped than you seem to have these days, is not utopian thinking.
Whats your solution then? You lurk around the margins, seemingly afraid to state your full opinion on matters such as these, obsessing over the failures of 'the left', which means you have far more to worry about than whether I've made you unhappy. I can't believe you can be satisfied with the current point you have reached in your political journey, and Im impatient to see you either travel onwards to the ugly zone which I so cruelly suggest you steadily slide towards, or choose a different path.
No. Not that bothered either.Have you read or seen it?
Of course they fucking are.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Plus sometimes variations in exchange rates and typical wages in their country of origin, makes the exploitation not seem like exploitation. Especially as exploitation is often felt & judged in a very relative way.
In much the same way I was on a piss-poor hourly rate up to the age of about 24, and the job I got after that didnt really feel like I was being exploited at all in comparison. Slowly the feeling fades and the grass starts to look greener on the other side of the fence, sense of entitlement grows.
Grandma Death
Reconfiguring & Reconstructing
As I understand it youth unemployment is a problem that is part and parcel of economies that are struggling and this has has been a feature of said economies prior to EU immigration. Young people have less skills, less experience etc and employers tend to be more choosey when there's a glut of unemployed people.
captainmission
Well-Known Member
why don't you start by sharing your views then? obviously you have an opinion on the issue.
i'd question why you single out immigrants? On a basic level any increase in labour supply will have a downwards pressure on wages- does that mean i should regard all co-workers competitors? That plays into the hands of capital quite well.
Lets take for example the development of 'flexible working'. I could say that is a simply an attack on pre-existing working condtion, requiring me to work unsocialalbe or be flexiable only on the employers terms. But the increase in flexible or part time labour has allowed people previously excluded from paid employment to work- people with childcare responsabilities for example. That in turn has increase the labour supply and presumably driven down wages. Should i resent this, largley female, work force?
Or what about woman having to work longer as the retirement age rises? what of there effects on the working class (which i guess, like immigrants, they are some how distinct from)? Maybe it's a case of we need to talk about eve?
Capitalism, by destroy what social order that came before it including pevious forms of capitalism, can be liberating for some people. I'm not gonna blame other workers for taking advantage of those oppotunties. The only winner there is my boss
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
Tbh, until recently I’ve been in ignorance about the scale of the gap between people from the east and people from the UK. It’s still surprising me just how much they are willing to sacrifice and undergo in order to get even the smallest foothold in this society. In fact, most of the people from the east are less prepared and less able to get a foothold than most Africans (as a general proposition, when they arrrive Africans having better English and closer to UK standard skill levels).
It is a seriously different mindset; they come from very underdeveloped societies, the training they have is usually substandard, their English is initially poor and, having saved for as long as they can remember, they run out of money very quickly. Until they get work, they often sleep not in shared rooms but shared beds, sometimes in shifts…. every, say, £50 earned is another foothold in this country for them.
I can see the hotel thing because, I assume, it comes with accommodation or subsidised accommodation. Maybe they can do jobs like laundry in the hotel that don’t require good English until they improve.
They are first generation immigrants – economic migrants - and, as such, the ones that manage to stay know it is their lot to work and sacrifice. It really is double fucking hard for them, and they’ll take literally any money to get a start.
The comparison with local people seems ill-conceived to me.
It is a seriously different mindset; they come from very underdeveloped societies, the training they have is usually substandard, their English is initially poor and, having saved for as long as they can remember, they run out of money very quickly. Until they get work, they often sleep not in shared rooms but shared beds, sometimes in shifts…. every, say, £50 earned is another foothold in this country for them.
I can see the hotel thing because, I assume, it comes with accommodation or subsidised accommodation. Maybe they can do jobs like laundry in the hotel that don’t require good English until they improve.
They are first generation immigrants – economic migrants - and, as such, the ones that manage to stay know it is their lot to work and sacrifice. It really is double fucking hard for them, and they’ll take literally any money to get a start.
The comparison with local people seems ill-conceived to me.
elbows
Well-Known Member
It should be relatively easy to establish whether that is the case. Simply take the discussion beyond complaints about the current state of affairs, into territory which actually discusses what should be done about it. Unless that is done I don't see how it is at all obvious what the intentions or consequences of the position are. I am as concerned with the unintended consequences of positions that play into divide & rule every bit as much as the intended ones.
Which 'people from the east' do you mean?' People from eastern Europe aren't from very underdeveloped societies, and half of them speak better English than most of us.
Yes, I was just about to say that certainly isn't true of any of the Eastern Europeans I know.
Not necessarily. Many people would argue for restrictions on immigration, for instance, especially in times like these. Some of them are racist, some are not. Arguing for restricting immigration isn't in itself racism.
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
Not accurate. You've met them because their English has improved enough for them to understand and even talk to you. Or they had a far better education at home than most.
It's not an iceberg but it's that shape.
Most of the immigrants I currently work with (from South Asia) are highly-educated and skilled back in their countries of origin, just they came here as their wives are nurses, so they take up whatever they can find, their own jobs/careers coming second to those of their spouses. One is a quantity surveyor, another an ex-accountant, and two are computer programmers. I've also worked with Latvians and Poles who are useless piss-heads and stoners (although a good laugh at times). The Poles hated Romanians, saying they're 'dirty.' Let's not have this bullshit whereby the doughty, plucky, saintly people from foreign lands are carving themselves a life, sacrificing their own happiness for that of their progeny, in stark contrast to the dumb native proles who don't know they're born. It's the wacky-tie Jon Snow doing his Ukrainian usher at the cinema, and some dingbat in the Guardian finding a spiritual connection with her eastern European cleaner.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Hmmmmm, that may be part of it, yes. I do think however, that it is naive not to realise that immigrants often can work for wages that British people woudn't. Often immigrants don't have family here to support, aren't thinking of putting down roots, often sleep several to a room in cheap accomodation etc (I know this is common in London anyhow). This often means that they can afford to work for less. Should our response then be anti-immigrant? Of course not, but it should recognise the issues and seek to build solidarity with foreign workers, help unionise so everyone can try and get a better wage.
Similar threads
