Massive rises in unemployment: Do we need to talk about Eva?

[frogwoman]

What has "Soviet era" anything to do with an 18-year old arriving on a bus tomorrow with enough money for 4 weeks and English that newly arrived Africans laugh at?

Bullshit.

 

[elbows]

It's common to get people working on the tills and in warehouses who trained to be doctors or lawyers at home.

I think you've stretched that point a bit too far there.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

You can't unionise the foreign workers in places where unions aren't recognised and nobody wants to risk sticking their necks out, least of all the east European worker who wants to make a packet and be off.

You can't unionise workers of any stripe in un-recognised workplaces easily - but there's nowt stopping us unionising Eastern european workers or any other other group of workers based on their self interest.

If the union is seen to be effective in some way at either/or defending T&Cs and representing in individual or collective grievences then people will join it irrespective of origins or politics. Poles, Turks, and Nigerians are in my experience some of the easiest migrant groups to unionise, and in all three cases due to coming from countries with histories of active trade unionisim.

 

[LLETSA]

Unionisation might actually help, per Blagsta's post. And I mean it would help everybody.

Again, who's going to do this unionising in the many workplaces where unions aren't recognised and even the indiginous workforce don't want to know?

The notion is a comfort blanket for people arguing on messageboards.

 

[LLETSA]

I think you've stretched that point a bit too far there.

You think so? Where my wife works one of the Polish warehouse lads trained to be a priest.

 

[Captain Hurrah]

Bullshit.

Exactly.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

. It's common to get people working on the tills and in warehouses who trained to be doctors or lawyers at home. .

Not from Eastern Europe in my experience, most of them are from similar backgrounds the only exception to the rule I know was a Polish mate who was working in a shop in London and is now a World Bank development manager and was only working here to pay for her phd.

 

[scifisam]

Again, who's going to do this unionising in the many workplaces where unions aren't recognised and even the indiginous workforce don't want to know?

It's a comfort balnket for people arguing in messageboards.

I don't know if it would actually work, and it probably wouldn't, but it's the only actual helpful suggestion so far.

 

[LLETSA]

You can't unionise workers of any stripe in un-recognised workplaces easily - but there's nowt stopping us unionising Eastern european workers or any other other group of workers based on their self interest.

If the union is seen to be effective in some way at either/or defending T&Cs and representing in individual or collective grievences then people will join it irrespective of origins or politics. Poles, Turks, and Nigerians are in my experience some of the easiest migrant groups to unionise, and in all three cases due to coming from countries with histories of active trade unionisim.

Again, who is this 'us'? There is no 'us' where either me or Mrs LLETSA work, as I said, and these are hardly untypical workplaces now.

 

[LLETSA]

Not from Eastern Europe in my experience, most of them are from similar backgrounds the only exception to the rule I know was a Polish mate who was working in a shop in London and is now a World Bank development manager and was only working here to pay for her phd.

Your experience is different from mine then. I'm not talking about anything as grand as World Bank development managers, just ordinary professionals who see a chance of making some money in menial job here because they don't need to spend much while here and it will go six times further back home. The education systems of the former Communist-run states churn out professionals by the million.

 

[chemn]

Tobyjug fact, maybe.....

please fark off on that one. I worked there too so know what I said to be true. I don't know why you're getting so worked up about an example I provided: one instance which will never be representative of all cases.

I wasn't saying that all English workers are lazy.

I just wanted to provide a different angle than the 'foreigners coming here and taking our jobs and driving wages down' tack taken by the op.

 

[LLETSA]

I don't know if it would actually work, and it probably wouldn't, but it's the only actual helpful suggestion so far.

It would work where there's a way of actually doing it. The trouble is there are plenty of workplaces where it isn't possible due to the factors I've spoken of.

 

[LLETSA]

If the union is seen to be effective in some way at either/or defending T&Cs and representing in individual or collective grievences then people will join it irrespective of origins or politics.

Not necessarily. If somebody wants to make as much money as possible and then go home (as I said, you can't blame them), then they'll want to keep their heads down. It's the way it goes.

 

[sihhi]

Surely, whether 'Keynesians' or not, people treat east european immigrant labour differently because it's come about suddenly, and for different reasons than previous waves in that it's part of being in the European single market that treats us all as one big country to all intents and purposes. That and the fact that unlike foreign labour from elsewhere, this is a temporary phenomenon. Most east Europeans have no intention of settling permanently but are here to make money that will go a lot further at home (you can't blame them) and are generally better educated than most workers who do menial jobs from elsewhere, as well as compared to indiginous workers, due to the fact that they are, at home, from professional occupations. It's common to get people working on the tills and in warehouses who trained to be doctors or lawyers at home.

As for divide-and-rule, it isn't posts on messageboards that divide and rule but the system in itself. The TUC and union activists can make all the noises they want, but in a situation like the one I describe above, they're nowhere to be seen. You can't unionise the foreign workers in places where unions aren't recognised and nobody wants to risk sticking their necks out, least of all the east European worker who wants to make a packet and be off.

As a generalisation that characterisation will weaken any attempt.
You're tossing stuff up for no reason. I have no doubt that TUC avoids all effort to unionise low-paid workers because 1. once they struggle like the cleaners in '09 they expose how hollow the bureaucratic set up is - including the trade union lefts. 2. as a business operation subs gained is not worth the effort.

In North east London, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks are settling here because they see unemployment as less worse than Poland Czech Republic - recession or no recession.
Even Romanians are settling here sending children to primary school.
Poles have their own playgroups and mothers meetings. There are single mum Poles who want to stay here.
There are Polish families here with children born in Britain. There are Poles in mixed relationships. A Slovakian is now living with an English person working as a babysitter for a new presenter's family, after.
If it's so temporary

The single market does not treat us all as the 'same' big country. It's way easier for an Australian to get a W.P. than a Bulgarian. Britain is still its own country/state. It has its own rules.
(No I'm not suggesting that Australians should be barred or deported)

 

[LLETSA]

As a generalisation that characterisation will weaken any attempt.
You're tossing stuff up for no reason. I have no doubt that TUC avoids all effort to unionise low-paid workers because 1. once they struggle like the cleaners in '09 they expose how hollow the bureaucratic set up is - including the trade union lefts. 2. as a business operation subs gained is not worth the effort.

In North east London, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks are settling here because they see unemployment as less worse than Poland Czech Republic - recession or no recession.
Even Romanians are settling here sending children to primary school.
Poles have their own playgroups and mothers meetings. There are single mum Poles who want to stay here.
There are Polish families here with children born in Britain. There are Poles in mixed relationships. A Slovakian is now living with an English person working as a babysitter for a new presenter's family, after.
If it's so temporary

The single market does not treat us all as the 'same' big country. It's way easier for an Australian to get a W.P. than a Bulgarian. Britain is still its own country/state. It has its own rules.
(No I'm not suggesting that Australians should be barred or deported)

I'm not saying that no east Europeans settle here, just that lots don't because they're here primarily to make money that will go much further at home. The figures seem to speak for themselves. How many went back when the recession hit in 2008 for instance?

I know that it's easier for Australians than Bulgarians in practice etc, but the single market where anybody in a member state can work in any member state in theory is what we're signed up to and it does have an effect in reality. If that wasn't the case we wouldn't have anywhere near as many eastern Europeans here.

It has little to do with TUC bureaucracy that nobody unionises workers in workplaces that don't recognise unions and indiginous and foreign workers alike don't want to take the risk even if they see the need.

 

[scifisam]

Bullshit.

Not really. It's hardly a majority of workers, but it does happen. It's especially true for people from the more restricted EU countries like Bulgaria. I have a friend from Bulgaria who's a qualified lawyer over there, speaks very good English and has spent years taking courses to improve her written English - because lawyers obviously require not only better English than most people, but different terminology - and last I heard she was still a cleaner.

It's partly because of employment laws and partly, sadly, because she spent so many years working as a cleaner.

Doctors - medical doctors - are better off, but they'll often have to spend a few years working in lower medical roles while they get the qualifications that allow them to work here - depends where they're from. Qualifications are not always transferable.

I also knew a Russian astrophysicist in Berlin, who'd been quite high up in their space shuttle programme (he was in a film we were making and we checked him out). He was working as a taxi driver. He'd had to leave and his time out of the field meant he could never really get back into it again.

This sort of thing is getting a lot better, actually, with more recognition of advanced degrees from different European countries (there was a change about five years ago - wish I could remember what the law itself was). But whenever you need to be eloquent in a language to do your job, it's more difficult if it's not your native language. I can't fathom how it could be otherwise. I mean, if you have to talk to an old toothless man from Glasgow whose pain is making him speak through gritted teeth, that's going to be hard enough without filtering his speech through a foreign language learnt mainly via British RP and American Mid-West accents.

That means that these qualified, experienced, hardworking people might end up taking other jobs while they retrain or requalify or improve their English language skills, and they have a hell of an advantage when it comes to getting those lesser-skilled jobs; it's not like they really really want those jobs, either, but they have to take them, meaning that someone else can't.

 

[scifisam]

please fark off on that one. I worked there too so know what I said to be true. I don't know why you're getting so worked up about an example I provided: one instance which will never be representative of all cases.

I wasn't saying that all English workers are lazy.

I just wanted to provide a different angle than the 'foreigners coming here and taking our jobs and driving wages down' tack taken by the op.

I'm not worked up.

So, you were just providing a different angle? And that different angle would be? I mean, you say it's not that all English workers are lazy, so what was it?

 

[sihhi]

Not necessarily. If somebody wants to make as much money as possible and then go home (as I said, you can't blame them), then they'll want to keep their heads down. It's the way it goes.

Yes, of course but this ('keep your head down') applies to local 'indigenous' workers or Scottish migrants to the South who might be planning to quit a job to go back studying/move elsewhere/look after their uncle/have a baby ('Not worth rocking the boat for a short while'). The latest excuse amongst the m/class worker is 'I can't afford to go on strike, I have two daughters who need their university fees paying'. The classic one w/class and m/class was 'There's a mortgage to pay'.

One possibility is to struggle for collective contracts - a workforce agreeing to demand a collective agreement of labour supplied so that there is no overtime etc which causes so much division a migrant make-as-much-as-you-can approach is to hold onto as many hours as possible.
If you have No recourse to public funds on the back of your permit - then obviously you are going to want to get in as many hours as possible. If asylum seekers were allowed to work it would change the sit again.

Yes LLETSA it's a difficult time.

 

[LLETSA]

Yes, of course but this ('keep your head down') applies to local 'indigenous' workers or Scottish migrants to the South who might be planning to quit a job to go back studying/move elsewhere/look after their uncle/have a baby ('Not worth rocking the boat for a short while'). The latest excuse amongst the m/class worker is 'I can't afford to go on strike, I have two daughters who need their university fees paying'. The classic one w/class and m/class was 'There's a mortgage to pay'.

One possibility is to struggle for collective contracts - a workforce agreeing to demand a collective agreement of labour supplied so that there is no overtime etc which causes so much division a migrant make-as-much-as-you-can approach is to hold onto as many hours as possible.
If you have No recourse to public funds on the back of your permit - then obviously you are going to want to get in as many hours as possible. If asylum seekers were allowed to work it would change the sit again.

Yes LLETSA it's a difficult time.

I know-like I said, everybody has an excuse. It's understandable as well, when life's hard enough to begin with, not to want to risk your job when you'll be victimised by your employers and quite possibly fucked over by those you tried to help.

I agree that there are possibilities, but without the people to try to put them into practice they remain on paper. (I'm not saying this applies everywhere.)

 

[chemn]

What angle was I taking?

A different one to the OP, as stated. One based on my experience of working with people who come from different countries.

I found the OP to be rather knee-jerky in terms of the ideas expressed, so I suppose I was providing a similarly knee-jerky type response in the other direction.

FWIW I think that times of high unemployment are to be expected with the global financial system geared as it is towards lining the pockets of the elite and maintaining the status quo in terms of exploitation of large swathes of populations.

I think immigration is a non-issue. People will move between countries as they please, and always have done to a greater or lesser degree.

The issue is unemployment and lack of jobs that have any reasonable career prospects. Immigrant workers may play a part in this, but are not the cause of it.

 

[scifisam]

Yes, of course but this ('keep your head down') applies to local 'indigenous' workers or Scottish migrants to the South who might be planning to quit a job to go back studying/move elsewhere/look after their uncle/have a baby ('Not worth rocking the boat for a short while'). The latest excuse amongst the m/class worker is 'I can't afford to go on strike, I have two daughters who need their university fees paying'. The classic one w/class and m/class was 'There's a mortgage to pay'.

One possibility is to struggle for collective contracts - a workforce agreeing to demand a collective agreement of labour supplied so that there is no overtime etc which causes so much division a migrant make-as-much-as-you-can approach is to hold onto as many hours as possible.
If you have No recourse to public funds on the back of your permit - then obviously you are going to want to get in as many hours as possible. If asylum seekers were allowed to work it would change the sit again.

Yes LLETSA it's a difficult time.

Well, 'I have a mortgage to pay' is a good reason, isn't it? I mean, maybe some people could sell up and move to somewhere smaller with a smaller mortgage, but that's not always financially viable and then there's still a mortage to pay. If someone already has a mortgage, then it's not very likely that private renting would cost them any less.

I'm not saying people should use this as a reason to not go on strike, just that it's as valid or not as 'I have rent to pay.'

 

[sihhi]

This sort of thing is getting a lot better, actually, with more recognition of advanced degrees from different European countries (there was a change about five years ago - wish I could remember what the law itself was). But whenever you need to be eloquent in a language to do your job, it's more difficult if it's not your native language. I can't fathom how it could be otherwise. I mean, if you have to talk to an old toothless man from Glasgow whose pain is making him speak through gritted teeth, that's going to be hard enough without filtering his speech through a foreign language learnt mainly via British RP and American Mid-West accents.

That means that these qualified, experienced, hardworking people might end up taking other jobs while they retrain or requalify or improve their English language skills, and they have a hell of an advantage when it comes to getting those lesser-skilled jobs; it's not like they really really want those jobs, either, but they have to take them, meaning that someone else can't.

East European countries are losing their doctors as a result. There was something about this in Bulgaria recently. I know Turkey has introduced a law allowing nonnational doctors and nurses to work in state hospitals (meaning Third World ones in all probability).

The local surgery has two Polish doctors and one Bulgarian. The language barrier is not as big an issue. A friend had the doctor misspell antihystamine as 'antihistamin' on a note the Polish version. Apparently the

X (Russian) is a qualified accountant and university maths teacher but she works in a care-home in Hertfordshire lives in London. I've asked about the situation of a union, she has become a Unison member I can't say that Sol-Fed or IWW or IWCA will really be able to help out the situation there - facing cuts in hours.

Ghanaian security people again problems - no pay rise in 3 years - both turned out to be old members of G.M.B. One trained as a forest engineer in Ghana.

 

[frogwoman]

Not really. It's hardly a majority of workers, but it does happen. It's especially true for people from the more restricted EU countries like Bulgaria. I have a friend from Bulgaria who's a qualified lawyer over there, speaks very good English and has spent years taking courses to improve her written English - because lawyers obviously require not only better English than most people, but different terminology - and last I heard she was still a cleaner.

It's partly because of employment laws and partly, sadly, because she spent so many years working as a cleaner.

Doctors - medical doctors - are better off, but they'll often have to spend a few years working in lower medical roles while they get the qualifications that allow them to work here - depends where they're from. Qualifications are not always transferable.

I also knew a Russian astrophysicist in Berlin, who'd been quite high up in their space shuttle programme (he was in a film we were making and we checked him out). He was working as a taxi driver. He'd had to leave and his time out of the field meant he could never really get back into it again.

This sort of thing is getting a lot better, actually, with more recognition of advanced degrees from different European countries (there was a change about five years ago - wish I could remember what the law itself was). But whenever you need to be eloquent in a language to do your job, it's more difficult if it's not your native language. I can't fathom how it could be otherwise. I mean, if you have to talk to an old toothless man from Glasgow whose pain is making him speak through gritted teeth, that's going to be hard enough without filtering his speech through a foreign language learnt mainly via British RP and American Mid-West accents.

That means that these qualified, experienced, hardworking people might end up taking other jobs while they retrain or requalify or improve their English language skills, and they have a hell of an advantage when it comes to getting those lesser-skilled jobs; it's not like they really really want those jobs, either, but they have to take them, meaning that someone else can't.

i know all this, i was just referring to lc's offensive generalisation that most eastern europeans can't speak english. in my experience most of the middle class youngsters and probably over half the working class ones (at least in the city) can speak english to a very good, or at least reasonable standard, and almost everyone under a certain age can speak at least a few words, often to intermediate level. this is in the poorest country in europe btw.

 

[scifisam]

What angle was I taking?

A different one to the OP, as stated. One based on my experience of working with people who come from different countries.

I found the OP to be rather knee-jerky in terms of the ideas expressed, so I suppose I was providing a similarly knee-jerky type response in the other direction.

FWIW I think that times of high unemployment are to be expected with the global financial system geared as it is towards lining the pockets of the elite and maintaining the status quo in terms of exploitation of large swathes of populations.

I think immigration is a non-issue. People will move between countries as they please, and always have done to a greater or lesser degree.

The issue is unemployment and lack of jobs that have any reasonable career prospects. Immigrant workers may play a part in this, but are not the cause of it.

I agree with all of this. But you backed this up with an example of British workers being lazy. That's... well, not helpful. The average Brit is less hard-working than the average economic migrant (from any country) for the reasons I gave above, but that doesn't mean they're actually lazy than the average person from whatever country or that it's a good point to bring up. Stereotypes can sometimes become self-fulfilling prophecies, esp, when they're applied to young people.

 

[scifisam]

East European countries are losing their doctors as a result. There was something about this in Bulgaria recently. I know Turkey has introduced a law allowing nonnational doctors and nurses to work in state hospitals (meaning Third World ones in all probability).

The local surgery has two Polish doctors and one Bulgarian. The language barrier is not as big an issue. A friend had the doctor misspell antihystamine as 'antihistamin' on a note the Polish version. Apparently the

X (Russian) is a qualified accountant and university maths teacher but she works in a care-home in Hertfordshire lives in London. I've asked about the situation of a union, she has become a Unison member I can't say that Sol-Fed or IWW or IWCA will really be able to help out the situation there - facing cuts in hours.

Ghanaian security people again problems - no pay rise in 3 years - both turned out to be old members of G.M.B. One trained as a forest engineer in Ghana.

Yeah, it's fucked up, isn't it? The richer countries accept the qualifications of the poorer countries, and then it's a brain-drain, or they don't accept them, so there are people taking jobs that other people want to do while they themselves could be using their skills better.

England is in a worse situation than others for this. Both because we've failed in teaching foreign languages for so long, and because English is so damn popular. Pretty much everyone in the entire continent has a grounding in English, some better than others, and there are tons of resources, teachers, and extramural opportunities to learn. And learning English is helpful even if you never plan to work in the UK, or the US, or Canada (etc). It's the current lingua franca (I love the irony of that term ).

Whereas it'd be a hell of a lot more difficult for a Brit to learn Polish enough to go and work over there. And Hungarian? Hah!

 

[scifisam]

i know all this, i was just referring to lc's offensive generalisation that most eastern europeans can't speak english. in my experience most of the middle class youngsters and probably over half the working class ones (at least in the city) can speak english to a very good, or at least reasonable standard, and almost everyone under a certain age can speak at least a few words, often to intermediate level. this is in the poorest country in europe btw.

Chatting to you in a pub, or at work when they know that you're English, is a different matter to actually being able to do a job in an English-speaking country unless it doesn't require much English. Written English is also a different skill to spoken English, and (as you know) understanding a language is way, way easier than either writing or talking in it.

I mean, I'm used to the fact that nobody in my local supermarkets (let alone cornershops) will understand most of what I'm saying, but it's not exactly ideal. You just get better at body language and cues from context - the staff as well as you. That has some good points too.

It is still mildly annoying that none of the staff can understand 'gluten-free' even with an exlanation (not all native Brits would get "gluten-free," but they'd get the explanation). Or 'sparklers.' Good God, it's hard finding sparklers in a shop that sells them but does not know the word! No, not spark plugs, please stop taking me back to the electrical goods section!

But hey, I've taught a lot of EFL students and helped them get such jobs, because they need them too. But I'd have not only taught them the word sparkler but given them some as we stood outside eating toffee apples because, well, it was fun.

Of course, English language funding has been hugely cut in the past few years. Helpful, that.

 

[London_Calling]

I live in South London and know parts of Eastern Europe very well and don't recognise your description. Sure there are some who are badly educated with poor English but that certainly isn't true of the majority of young East Europeans ime.

By experiencing it every day, I didn't mean by virtue of where I live. It is absolutely true of the vast maj. Fwiw, I think you see primariliy those who speak better English - becasue they speak better English, and you assume that to be a reasonable random sample.

 

[London_Calling]

i know all this, i was just referring to lc's offensive generalisation that most eastern europeans can't speak english.

I said, as a general proposition, they speak poorer English than their African counterparts. Plus, Englsih people tend to meet only those who, surprisingly enough, speak reasonable English - those are the ones you meet for obv. reasons. The rest you don't.

And, fwiw, I'm still talking in general about the unskilled/youth market as, I thought, was the OP. Like all markets, it is segmented.

 

[chilango]

Is there anything "new" to add to this argument since the last time treelover brought it up?

 

[Blagsta]

'Our response'? Who are 'we'? In the firm where my wife works, she's one of only three who are actually in a union, which the firm doesn't recognise, and that's only in the offices. Down in the warehouse the lads born and bred here, let alone the foreign workers, are too scared to join a union or aren't interested. And nobody wants to get them interested anyway.

Where I work the picture's slightly better but similar. This is what today's private sector is like.

By "we" I mean people on the left, trade unionists etc.