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Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 8:44:30 GMT
Migrants group brands government as ‘biggest human trafficker”“With the recent developments, Filipinos in Sabah have become more vulnerable to crackdowns and abuses. This, without doubt, is the direct result of the Aquino government’s defeatist and passive stance on the Sabah issue.” – Migrante PartylistBy JANESS ANN J. ELLAOBulatlat.comMANILA – The execution of Flor Contemplacion has shown what is wrong with the country’s labor export policy. But 18 years since then, Migrante International said, the government has done nothing to protect OFWs and has become the top human trafficker of its own people.“I call on President Aquino to be more humane and look after the welfare of OFWs. They are humans, not mere things,” Nilo Atienza, husband of Terril Atienza, an OFW who died in Mongolia in 2011, said in a protest action last March 17.Terril’s remains was repatriated here in Manila on Dec. 9, 2011. According to initial autopsy reports from Mongolia, Terril died of “severe intoxication from an unknown source.” But a second autopsy, this time conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation here in Manila, revealed that her death was “probably secondary to hypertensive cardiovascular disease due to a stabbing incident.”What is even more troubling to the Atienza family is why some of Terril’s internal organs were found to be missing, including her heart and that her internal organs were “sectioned with missing portions.” A rag, according to the NBI autopsy report, was also found inside her body.Nilo, during the commemoration of Flor Contemplacion’s execution and the kick-off event of “Stop the Traffic,” a year-long campaign of Migrante International against human trafficking, said they are still having a hard time accepting what happened to his wife, saying that his wife left full of dreams but returned home lifeless.Contemplacion was an overseas Filipino who was sentenced to die in Singapore in 1995 for allegedly killing a fellow Filipino domestic helper.During the kick-off event, members and supporters of Migrante International and other progressive groups such as Gabriela and Kadamay, formed a human chain to show their resolve to end human trafficking and to hold the government accountable for its inaction on these cases.“We all unite under the creed that it is the main responsibility of the Philippine government and governments of receiving countries to protect and ensure the welfare and rights of our OFWs,” the Stop the Traffic network said.Labor export policyMigrante Partylist said Republic Act 8042, which was amended by RA 10022 or the Migrant Workers Act of 1995, has made the Philippine government become the top trafficker of its workers.“Human trafficking is still rampant and operating in record-high levels in the Philippines yet the accountability of perpetrators and their coddlers in government remains low. Worse, the labor export policy, the government program that systematically and aggressively peddles the cheap labor of our Filipino workers abroad, has become more entrenched and institutionalized, especially under the Aquino administration,” Migrante Partylist first nominee Connie Bragas-Regalado said.She added that, “the government’s labor export policy is the worst form of state-sponsored human trafficking of our Filipino workers.”The government’s labor export policy was supposedly a temporary arrangement under the Marcos administration back in the 1970s to cope with the financial crisis at that time. A previous Bulatlat.com report published in 2009 read that the lack of local job opportunities prompted the Philippine government to supply the increasing demand for male engineers and skilled workers in the Middle East.But three decades since then, the Philippine government continues to send its workers abroad, resulting in the country being one of the world’s biggest source of migrant labor, with about 10 percent of its population working in countries around the world.Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Luz Ilagan, in an interview in 2009, said the government is not just earning from OFW remittances but also from payments for the necessary documents that Filipino migrant workers need to secure, such as passports and clearances.“Stop the labor export policy,” the protesters chanted last Mar. 17.Stop the Traffic, in its report, said that the state-sponsored human trafficking has become so alarming that even the United States “had warned the Philippine government to gets its act together lest it remains under Tier 2 of the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report.”Government data show that the number of victims of human trafficking is conservatively pegged at 300,000 to 400,000. “Many of them migrate to work through legal and illegal means but are later coerced into exploitative conditions, drug trade or white slavery,” Stop the Traffic report read.Under the Aquino administration, Stop the Traffic said, the government only implemented “cosmetic reforms” when it signed the Expanded Anti-Human Trafficking in Persons Act.
Sabah, destination for trafficked FilipinosMigrante International said Sabah is one of the worst places for any Filipino worker to be in. “Now with the ongoing conflict and the Philippine government’s complicity, we fear that it will become a more dangerous place for Filipinos and their children,” Regalado said.Crackdown of undocumented Filipinos working in Sabah has recently intensified as Malaysian authorities search for supporters and followers of Sulu sultan Jamalul Kiram, who dramatized the sultanate’s historic claim on the disputed land by sending armed followers into Sabah.“After the first attack on Sabah, we have already received reports of indiscriminate crackdowns and raids on households whose residents have Filipino-sounding names. This is on top of the long-neglected miserable situation of our OFWs in Sabah,” Regalado said, adding that they have also received reports of discrimination and racist attacks on OFWs based in Malaysia.In 2009, Migrante International led a fact finding mission in Sabah, where they found out that about 80 to 90 percent of Filipinos residing and working there were victims of human trafficking.“With the recent developments, Filipinos in Sabah have become more vulnerable to crackdowns and abuses. This, without doubt, is the direct result of the Aquino government’s defeatist and passive stance on the Sabah issue. Filipinos in Sabah are now being ‘criminalized’ or deemed ‘illegal’ or ‘undocumented’ because our own government does not support the legitimacy of their stay in Sabah,” Regalado said. (http://bulatlat.com) - See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/03/21/migrants-group-brands-government-as-%e2%80%98biggest-human-trafficker%e2%80%9d/#sthash.KskYfY8d.dpuf
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Post by dodger on Aug 9, 2013 10:17:25 GMT
www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/95540Features
We must face up to divisive challenges
Tuesday 21 September 2010 Linda Kaucher
Most workers will recognise that corporations have been rapidly exporting manufacturing and services work to cheaper labour areas.
At the same time these businesses' ability to move workers across borders represents a major capitalist strategy to undermine labour standards, wages and workers' power in the few places, such as Britain, where they exist as a result of struggle and limited labour supply.
However the much-needed debate on this key capitalist strategy and on the "regulations" being formulated to push it through remains limited. This debate is frequently silenced by a left that seems reluctant to face up to reality.
Along with Labour references to jobs and the need to create jobs, alongside Con-Dem talk of cuts, proposals for how to deal with this means of undermining labour - or even an acknowledgement that these factors exist - are entirely absent. This is despite the obvious detrimental effect of local workers' displacement to the "national economy," which is generally central to the debate.
The mechanisms which enable firms to capitalise on wage differences between workers, resulting in the displacement of Britain's workers, are enshrined at national level, within the EU and in the European bloc's external trade commitments.
Britain's points-based system for migrants enables transnational firms to bring in their own "intracorporate transferees" from outside the EU. This applies wherever a transnational firm has invested in an existing business in Britain or has an established base here.
And, as recession cuts bite, outsourcing firms using migrant labour are likely to become commonplace. Local workers will be displaced on a massive scale.
India-based giant Tata, for instance, is the biggest owner of manufacturing in Britain. RBS sacked hundreds of British workers last week, but it is also established in India and could replace them with Indian workers.
Internally within the EU not only does free movement of labour allow individual workers to come and work in Britain but free movement of services allows firms within the EU to bring in their own "posted workers" in order to "fulfil service contracts" in other member states.
The engineering construction industry has felt and continues to feel the sharp end of free movement of services within the EU, leaving many workers unemployed across the country despite there being work locally.
And the definition of work itself has changed. Most sectors are now classed as "services," including collecting rubbish, and the construction, IT and sex industries.
The "services" label is much more about a shift from real, solid jobs to contracting-out and less secure conditions than it is about the actual nature of the work.
By redefining sectors in this way the legal mechanisms formulated for "services" can be employed in the cross-border movement of workers to increase profits.
The same phenomenon is taking place within international trade agreements. These now include a major component called Mode 4, which allows transnational corporations to move workers across borders from outside the EU.
An EU-India free trade agreement is currently being fast-tracked. Labour access is the Indian government's central demand, though this has not been revealed publicly. Once formal trade agreement commitments are made, however, they are beyond national adjustment. They are effectively irreversible.
Con-Dem government statements on an immigration "cap" need to be seen in this context. Britain's points-based system and the coalition's cap plans are actually designed to dovetail with Mode 4 commitments enshrined within EU trade agreements.
The Con-Dem cap is a con in itself, nothing more than political spin to allay public concerns both of excessive permanent migration and separate concerns over labour migration. It successfully confuses the two and addresses neither.
In a 2009 report the Migration Advisory Committee, which is currently assisting with the Con-Dem proposals, looked at labour migration and acknowledged that trade commitments took precedent over national policy-making. Corporate gains from labour migration and Britain's Mode 4 commitments as an EU member state must not be impeded, it seems, by national regulation.
Consultation over the Con-Dem cap is just window dressing. Intracorporate transferees will still be excluded, as they have been from the interim cap, so that national policy does not interfere with the trade commitments the EU is making on our behalf. Britain's workers will have no protection from the corporate onslaught of cheap labour.
The cap that has been spun as a limiting mechanism will actually secure forever corporations' rights to profit from moving workers across borders.
But if the Con-Dem cap is a sham without credibility, where is the authentic debate and action among those who assume the mantle of defending and maintaining workers' rights?
Until these offensives are openly and critically debated workers will remain unable to meet the challenge and defend themselves. The longer this debate is silenced the less chance there is of beating the threat.
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Post by dodger on Aug 10, 2013 17:00:28 GMT
Our ninth article to mark the 40th anniversary of the CPBML by looking at the past four decades through the eyes of Workers and its predecessor, The Worker. This month: Opening the debate on migration…
2000: Nothing free about the free movement of labour
WORKERS, OCTOBER 2008 ISSUE
The subject of migration– both immigration and emigration – is one that many on the so-called left refuse to deal with. Yet it is an issue that won’t go away. In this groundbreaking article in November 2000, Workers took the issue head on. Who benefits? Not the workers here, and not the countries where the migrant labourers come from, either.
“Modern capitalism sees national boundaries as inconvenient irritants, restricting their right to do what they want. The ‘free’ movement of global labour is part of the capitalist dream embodied in the EU. The ideal is a single market in goods and people in which capitalists can make and sell their goods wherever they want unconstrained by national governments. They can then take their pick from a rootless, unorganised workforce which moves at their behest, lacking the power to determine pay and the conditions of their work and lives.
This is the reality of the Global Market we are asked to revere, fear and accept as inevitable as the world of the future: a world in which the balance of power between capital and labour, which swung in our favour in Russia in 1917, swings back to the capitalist class.
A number of factors have driven the worldwide rise in mass migration. Wars and economic hardship, together with the deprivation and dislocation brought about by capitalism in eastern Europe, combine with the relative ease of travel and speed of global communications. This in turn enables movement from country to country to seem more desirable and become more possible. These movements have profound effects on the countries people move to and on those they leave behind.
In Britain, the movement of foreign labour into the country enables employers to keep wages low in professions such as teaching and nursing. The acute shortage of teachers of certain key subjects and in the more difficult schools is glossed over by the practice of employing teachers from abroad on supply (non-permanent) contracts, paid rates set by the agencies which employ them. Teaching in London, one of the most expensive of capital cities, is now officially classed as a shortage occupation for immigration purposes, meaning that schools applying for work permits for non-European teachers (European are not so keen to come here) no longer need to show that they have been unable to employ a British teacher.
In nursing, some posts are extremely difficult to fill at present salaries in inner London hospitals because nurses would either need to have expensive inner London accommodation for their families or to travel to their shifts at difficult times for public transport. These jobs are often filled by nurses from abroad, with women living in digs and sending money home to their families.
Indian stonemasons allowed into Britain under the new Home Office relaxation of regulations to work on a Hindu temple in north London are being paid £3 a day…they are now demanding the British minimum wage, an increase of about 1000%!
The high rate of exploitation of these legal workers is multiplied many times with illegal immigrants. As we reported in WORKERS last year, they form an important part of the labour force of agricultural gangworkers who pack supermarket goods in the countryside of Scotland, East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Kent and Sussex. The TGWU Agricultural Workers trade group has exposed their plight: working long hours for tiny wages in often dangerous and unhygienic conditions. Their illegal status makes them unlikely to protest or join a union, and their low wages are used to intimidate other, legal, workers.
Lift all restrictions?
So, in Britain, is the answer to illegal immigration to lift all restrictions, to allow in anyone at all who wants to come and live here? Immigrant workers make it easier for employers to worsen pay and conditions for workers here, but what of the effects on the countries they leave?
TITLE The impact of emigration on the possibilities for growth in poor, developing countries is potentially devastating. Developed capitalist countries are poaching the skilled workers from their former colonies.
According to UN figures, almost one-third of skilled African workers had emigrated by the late 1980s – 60,000 high- and middle-ranking managers leaving for Europe and north America in five years by 1990. During that time, Sudan lost 45% of its surveyors, 30% of its engineers, 20% of its university lecturers, and 17% of its doctors and dentists. 60% of Ghanaian doctors practise abroad.
The member states of the EU which are the intended destination for these people have mass unemployment, yet the UN Commission on Population has said they need to take 75 million immigrants by 2050 – to keep up their populations or to maintain high levels of unemployment? What’s wrong with national long-term planning to ensure the supply of educated and skilled workers needed by a modern economy? All those who live and work (or want work) in Britain should be included in such a plan.…
Capitalism won’t pay
…But British workers who produce the wealth which pays for the system through taxation cannot support by their labour unlimited numbers of extra citizens who come here, wittingly or unwittingly, in the interest of the ruling class. Is capitalism offering to pay for the maintenance of people they have displaced from their own countries and lured to others? Of course not.
Eventually, nations have to grapple with their own problems, however difficult and painful. Here in Britain we have to deal with our capitalist class which wants to give up our sovereignty to Brussels. Every independent nation has a democratic right to determine what and who crosses its borders in either direction. If we allow capitalists to decide, you can be sure that workers will be the losers both here and in the developing countries.”
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Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 5:30:32 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/opinion/opinion_0712/migration.htmlMigration and LabourWORKERS, JULY 2012 ISSUEThe Labour Party is shifting ground on migration. Ed Miliband’s latest speech certainly moves things on from Gordon Brown’s “bigot” outburst at the last general election. But there’s a long way to go before Labour – or many in the unions – get in line with the reality that most workers in Britain experience and know.Bigots are people “intolerant of ideas other than their own” according to one dictionary. That’s a perfect description of many on the so-called “left” who have been wilfully ignoring the evidence before their eyes.The ultra-left have been clothing themselves in the rhetoric of neoliberal conservatives, wittering on about the “benefit to Britain”. And there clearly are benefits to mass migration if you’re an employer looking to sink pay rates below even the minimum wage. Or if you’re one of the modern buy-to-let racketeers renting out houses where families huddle in one room.Instead of speaking up and speaking openly about the recruitment agencies that advertise exclusively in eastern Europe, they have pretended it’s not happening. Miliband at least is now talking about the agencies that exclude British workers from jobs by not even taking them on their books.Instead of documenting and publicising the chaos and disruption to children and NHS patients from unplanned and unfinanced surges of demand for education and health, they talk about “vibrant” communities.What’s vibrant about turning sheds into multi-occupation slums, about rack rents pricing housing out of the reach of most workers, about primary schools with no room for local children?Unfortunately, through his acceptance of the European Union, Miliband (like Cameron) has given up the battle before he has even started it. “We cannot set the numbers coming in from the rest of the EU,” he said in his speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research in June. “So I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep.”Coyly, Miliband makes no reference to “British jobs for British workers”, a demand labelled as racist by ultra-left and establishment alike. Yet the EU promotes the immigration of workers from Eastern Europe, all of them white, taking jobs away from black, Asian-origin and white workers here. So one might argue that being for open migration from the EU is to be “pro white”! All this talk about race is utter nonsense, of course.
Unlimited migration is in no one’s interests but capitalism’s
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Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 9:21:38 GMT
This:Seoul: Filipinas forced into sex trade with foreigners and US soldiers. Filipinas entering South Korea on E-6 “Arts and Performance” visas who are eventually forced into prostitution is rising at an alarming rate, NGOs and activists report. For human rights groups, their fate is a “clear case of human trafficking” because the women end up offered as sex slaves to foreign businessmen and US military personnel stationed in the country. |
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Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 18:01:13 GMT
back to front - a modern slave trade
WORKERS, MARCH 2004 ISSUE
On 5 February, 20 (possibly more) Chinese cockle pickers died in Morecambe Bay. How could this have been allowed to happen?
As long ago as the summer of 2000, BBC's Panorama exposed the gangmaster system. Last July, the TUC warned that migrant workers were being exploited across the country, in Scotland, East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Kent, Sussex and elsewhere. Their numbers have risen by 44% in the last seven years, to an estimated 2.6 million. (This is probably an underestimate, given the difficulty of counting illegal workers.) Last September, the House of Commons Select Committee on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs produced a report on illegal working. Yet the government did nothing.
Morecambe people, including cockle pickers, had warned of the dangers to the Chinese people working illegally in the Bay, but nobody in authority had listened. When police and officials from the Department for Work and Pensions organised a raid to find illegal workers in Morecambe, the Immigration Service refused to help, claiming a "shortage of resources", and "other priorities".
Yet when the local MP wrote to the Home Office, immigration minister Beverley Hughes replied, "The Government is cracking down on illegal working and making good progress in removing increasing numbers of immigration offenders...". In fact, in the whole country, only one alleged gangmaster had been prosecuted in 2002, and four-fifths of those who lost asylum appeals stayed in Britain anyway.
Now the government says that it will back Jim Sheridan's private member's bill requiring gangmasters to be registered, to make them pay the minimum wage and ensure workers' safety. Yet there are already laws in abundance governing minimum wages, health and safety, human rights, etc. — and unless every single one has a clause in it saying that it does not apply to gangmasters, the government could enforce them now. A new bill is unnecessary, just a parade of concern.
Why are the existing laws not being enforced? Because to this government and the class it represents, the free movement of global labour is more sacred than life. Workers from abroad, willing to pay £20K to buy themselves into slavery, working nine-hour days for a £1 a day, suit capitalism just fine. The big supermarkets buy from farms and food packaging factories that use migrant labour, then deny all knowledge. A free labour market equals a modern slave trade.
One gangmaster tried to excuse capitalism by blaming the tragedy on 'racism' among the cockle pickers, but 'racism' is not the problem: white migrant workers from Eastern Europe are equally exploited.
The answer to problems created by the free movement of labour is not to free it even more, by for instance legalising all immigration, as some suggest. Removing even the current, limited controls would encourage more people to come here for work, increasing the competition for jobs, further lowering wages and conditions. To welcome immigration, as the government does, is to welcome low wages and poor conditions.
We need to take control of our affairs. The Immigration Service should be allowed to do its job and enforce the laws against illegal immigration and illegal working. On asylum we should follow Holland's example, and decide asylum cases within 48 hours, and appeals within 60 days. Rejected asylum seekers are deported at once. Above all, local communities and trade unions need to involve themselves in organising migrant workers wherever they are, forcing the employers to improve wages and conditions
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Post by dodger on Aug 16, 2013 12:59:09 GMT
there's nothing free about the 'free movement of labour'
WORKERS, JUNE 2004 ISSUEwww.workers.org.uk/features/feat_0604/mobility.htmlThe impact of migrant labour on the home country: what happens when doctors migrate from Old Europe to New EuropeAt Karlovy Vary hospital near the Czech Republic's western border with Germany, Dr Roman Brazdil, head of the intensive care unit, is facing an acute problem. In the past 18 months four doctors have quit his ward, and more are set to leave now that the door to the European Union is open, with 10 nations, mainly former Soviet bloc states like the Czech Republic, having joined the EU on May 1. "Once we are in the European Union there is nothing to stop doctors leaving, especially when they can earn up to eight times more abroad," Brazdil said in a recent interview.Joining the EU means automatic recognition for qualifications gained anywhere in the bloc and no formal requirement to prove language proficiency. And several Western countries are now actively recruiting doctors from the new member states, which are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.Doctors' journals in several of the new member countries are full of advertisements for lucrative work packages in Western Europe. With a doctor's basic monthly salary around 800 euros in Hungary and as low as 420 euros in Poland and 312 euros in Latvia it's easy to see why many physicians are tempted to work abroad. The result of this brain drain is that some hospitals could be left with a shortage of healthworkers."We fear that after 1 May we will lack medical specialists," Polish Doctors Chamber spokeswoman Iwona Raszke-Rostkowska, told the news agency AFP. "Polish doctors are already leaving for Germany, Britain and Sweden where they are regarded as good specialists and very prized," she said. But it is hard for the hospitals they l eave. "You can't just replace a specialist with 10 or 12 years' experience overnight," Brazdil said. Border regions like Karlovy Vary are particularly susceptible. Doctors can commute to better-paying countries while continuing to live at home without having to relocate their families. Milan Kubek, chairman of the Czech doctors' trade union, said that while the average Czech doctor's monthly salary, including overtime, was 35,000 koruna (1,070 euros), Czech doctors could earn up to seven times a month more in Britain. "If we want doctors to stay in the Czech Republic, their salaries must be raised significantly," he said.Kubek emphasised that another reason doctors were tempted to go abroad was greater professional and further study opportunities. Officials admit they are concerned. "I personally have deep concerns that doctors and nurses from Latvia could move to other EU states after enlargement," Rinalds Mucins, Latvian heath minister, told AFP. Mucins expects that mostly young people with language skills will be tempted abroad. "We have to solve several tough tasks. The most urgent are wages, workloads and the education system," the minister said, adding, "It is not easy."A Hungarian health ministry spokeswoman said the issue was "worrying" and was currently being researched by the ministry. She said the Hungarian health system already lacks five percent of the medical personnel it needs. Petr Ottinger, Slovakia's deputy minister of health, said the greatest risk is faced by smaller hospitals in the regions. Czech Health Minister Marie Souckova said however that limited and temporary migration was not necessarily negative. "It is not a bad thing if doctors go abroad to get some valuable experience. Most of them will come back," she told AFP. But will they? Many young newly-qualified doctors such as Hungarian Peter Salstig, aged 30, are impatient to leave as soon as they finish their studies. "As soon as I qualified two years ago I started looking for a job abroad and am now earning 10 times as much in Switzerland as I would in Hungary."
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Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 4:59:09 GMT
The TUC has plenty of evidence to show how mass migration is being encouraged by employers to bring down wages – successfully – but it still refuses to draw the only logical conclusion...
Memo to the TUC: the real economics of migration
WORKERS, OCT 2007 ISSUE
The TUC report, "The economics of migration: managing the impacts", published in June, claims that immigration benefits Britain. The TUC deserves some credit for joining the debate, but rather less for the anti-working class conclusions it reaches. In this article, we review a plethora of findings, from the TUC's own (albeit ignored) evidence through a number of eminent economic sources, and conclude that immigration is harmful to workers to the same degree as it benefits capitalism – racist as ever, whenever they get the opportunity they pay foreigners even less than they pay the indigenous workforce.
The figures showing the number of foreigners who have moved to the UK in recent years are heartening to the employer:
2002-3: 349,000
2003-4: 370,000
2004-5: 439,000
2005-6: 662,000
2006-7: 713,000
Total: 2,533,000
There are also, by Home Office estimate, some 430,000 illegal immigrants who are particularly "favoured" in the employment market.
The expansion of the EU has been the main reason for the increase. 222,000 Poles were given National Insurance numbers for the first time in 2006–7, bringing the total to 466,000 in the last four years. In a recent survey, half the Polish immigrants said that they would like to stay here – so much for the government's claim that they'll all go back.
Poaching
UN Resolution 2417 forbids poaching specialist professionals, yet the government's own figures show that:
38 per cent of all doctors working in hospitals in England qualified outside of Britain.
40 per cent of new dentists were born abroad.
58 per cent of new doctors in the NHS were born overseas.
25 per cent of British medics have their roots in the Indian subcontinent. They supply a third of trainee doctors.
44,000 overseas nurses worked in the NHS last year alone.
In Greater London 23 per cent of doctors and 47 per cent of nurses working in the NHS were born overseas.
The more skilled the immigrants, the more the loss to the source countries. In a 1990 study, the ILO found that a 'truly astonishing' proportion of highly educated people aged 25+ with 13 or more years of education had emigrated to the USA: for example, Guyana 80.62 per cent, Jamaica 69.34 per cent, Gambia 58.51 per cent, El Salvador 46.63 per cent, Trinidad 43.7 per cent. The TUC report has to admit "the negative effects of migration" on developing countries.
As the TUC report says, 'Migrant workers ... often earn much less than native workers would for the same work.' Since 2002, real wages of new immigrants have fallen relative to those of British workers. As the TUC report admits, "it is likely that workers who are unable to enforce their employment rights and constantly at risk of being reported to the authorities by their employers are more vulnerable than any other group. It seems extremely unlikely that this would not have some impact on wage levels, at least at the bottom end of the labour market."
So, "migration may have held down pay at the bottom end of the distribution". And, "Migrant workers are more likely to work in jobs with higher health and safety risks and to be even more at risk than other workers." Employers gain hugely from illegal workers, who lower wages and increase profits, and the government looks the other way. Yet the TUC still says that immigration is good for Britain!
A recent report, The Impact of Recent Immigration on the London Economy (City of London, July 2007), describes as a positive effect of migration "its quantitative contribution through expanding labour supply and thus enabling employment growth and reducing upward wage pressure". It goes on, "An effect of the concentration of migrants in the worst paid segment of the labour market has been a significant downward pressure on wages at the bottom end of the market. This seems to have encouraged job growth in these occupations, but earnings among workers in this sector have suffered, falling behind growth in the cost of living."
As the TUC notes, 15 per cent of employers target Eastern European immigrants. For example, at one North Wales factory, the employer sacked the entire workforce, and two weeks later hired a contingent of Polish workers, at much reduced wages.
Inaccurate statistics
Further, says the TUC "the Local Government Association claimed that inaccurate migration statistics had left as many as 25 local authorities paying for services to migrants who had not been included when the central government grant to authorities was being calculated. Up to 25 councils, including Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester were affected."
Yet after all this evidence that an increase in the number of unskilled migrants reduces the wages of unskilled domestic workers, the TUC report concludes, "the country as a whole is benefiting from migration, as we noted above, the Treasury expects it to account for at least a tenth of future economic growth". Note that the sole proof of benefit from migration that the TUC produces is not any actual existing present benefit, but only a Treasury prediction of "future economic growth". If they had been able to find any present benefit, they would certainly have said so!
If the TUC officers cannot see the wisdom of their own evidence, then it is asking too much of them to look further. But we will.
So, economist Paul Samuelson writes, "an increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates." A US study found that a 10 per cent increase in labour supply reduced wages for all groups. "Undoubtedly access to lower-wage foreign workers has a depressing effect [on wages]," says former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Research suggests that between 40 and 50 per cent of wage-loss among low-skilled Americans is due to the immigration of low-skilled workers. Some native workers lose not just wages but their jobs through immigrant competition. An estimated 1,880,000 American workers are displaced from their jobs every year by immigration.
Wage reduction
Then George Borjas, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard finds, "benefits from immigration arise because immigrants reduce the wage that native workers get paid." No workers' pain, no employers' gain. Native workers lose, and this loss accrues to capitalists. "Workers lose because immigrants drag wages down. Employers gain because immigrants drag wages down. These wealth transfers may be in the tens of billions of dollars per year." For example, in the last 16 years US immigration has increased the labour supply by 16 million, 10 per cent, and cut the native wage rate by 3-4 per cent = $152 billion. It also increased US national income, but only by 0.1 per cent = $8 billion. Total gain to capital, $160 billion. In sum, says Borjas, "Immigration redistributes wealth from labor to capital."
The Wall Street Journal constantly calls for unrestricted immigration. Perhaps in theory it is possible that the US capitalist class's chief organ has misread the bottom line, and that unrestricted immigration is bad for capitalism and good for the working class, but is it likely? Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, pointed out what should be obvious to the TUC – that the laws of supply and demand inevitably imply that an increase in the supply of workers lowers wages and decreases inflationary pressures.
Britain's low wage rates are partly due to high immigration flows, which is why immigrant labour is popular with employers. New Trade Minister, Digby, Lord Jones, says, "we have a tight labour market in the UK and yet wage inflation has not been a problem. Immigrants are doing the work for less."
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, says, "Immigration has reduced wage inflation ... the inflow of migrant labour, especially in the past year or so from Eastern Europe, has probably led to a diminution of inflationary pressure on the labour market."
Evidence
Professor Richard Layard of LSE, who helped to design the Government's Welfare to Work programme, wrote, "There is a huge amount of evidence that any increase in the number of unskilled workers lowers unskilled wages and increases the unskilled unemployment rate. If we are concerned about fairness, we ought not to ignore these facts. Employers gain from unskilled immigration. But the unskilled do not."
Immigration has an adverse effect on the job opportunities of those British workers whose skills are similar. The greater the number of immigrants, the greater the losses suffered by those who compete with immigrant workers. Immigrants take jobs that natives cannot afford to take and work for less than the going rate. Had immigrants never arrived the employer would have been forced to raise wages to fill the positions.
The present wave of unskilled immigration is destroying the jobs, wages and conditions of our less skilled workers. A 'guest worker' programme of permits for temporary low skilled labour would also benefit employers and harm low skilled labour. Canada, Australia and New Zealand exclude low skilled labour through point systems and quotas aimed at recruiting highly skilled immigrants, but a skills-based point system would threaten the wages and conditions of our skilled workers.
Where's the need?
In Britain, there are more than two million "economically inactive" people who want a job. The real level of unemployment is 4.5 million, so why do we need to import workers?
Employers are glad to recruit overseas as this avoids both higher wages and training costs. But overseas recruitment is a disincentive to training and re-training British workers. It is also a disincentive to investment.
We need to defend skill, defend the interests of our skilled British working class, and demand apprenticeships to develop skills. If we did all these things properly, would we need any immigration?
But first we need to get to grips with the evidence and base our arguments on them. At the moment there is too much claptrap coming from both "sides": unpleasant racists who hate all foreigners and so-called liberal thinkers who smother workers with their "caring", masking only their cowardice to face up to reality.
Meanwhile, in all this muddled thinking and refusal to discuss, the real sides of the argument are missed: as always, it's workers versus capitalists and as always we forget this at our peril.
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A timely look at an attack on British Workers. Let me first say I applaud the stand taken here. It's message has not gone unheard at all levels of the organized working class. It is a line that has resonated with many. Increasingly the evidence has been confirmed by simple observation by workers, hence internalized. The issues were talked about. Ready responses, popular NOT populist--does the left even know the difference? Evidently with consistent poll figures, against mass immigration, in the high 80's efforts to silence or mollify workers and unions to debate has and will FAIL. Social dumping serves none but the ruling class. The Race card simply put does not cut it.
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Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 8:53:41 GMT
Migration – The Big Issue
Posted on March 16, 2013 by imarxman
Apologists for capitalism talk about freedom. The freedoms they advocate are the free movements of goods, capital and labour. The latter freedom causes confusion amongst those critical of the first two. The stain of racism, of association with Far Right ideology, places the issue beyond rational discussion. And who benefits? Capitalism!Immigration as a popular topic in the tabloid press often carries the taint of racism. This is doubly dangerous for the working class, enflaming latent prejudices while promoting race as the problem.To be clear, race is most definitely not the issue. Superficial appearances such as skin colour or variations in physique and features do not denote profound differences. To quote a cliché, there is only one race, the human race.Capitalism suppresses wage levels as far as possible. This can be through the free movement of capital, taking production from a “high wage” country to one with low wages. In recent times this has seen manufacturing being removed to China.The free movement of labour brings the cheaper workforce into the country. Due to poverty around the world there’s no shortage of people desperate enough to move for even marginal improvements in living standards.Desperation is exploited by capitalism in receiving countries, an increased the pool of competitive labour reducing wage rates. The minimum wage becomes the standard wage, immediately better for the migrant, but effectively impoverishing workers generally.The European Union guarantees free movement of labour by statute so individual member states cannot legally prevent migrants from one country moving to another. During periods of economic crisis, the ranks of the reserve army of labour – the unemployed – become swollen.Uneven development of the EU encourages large numbers from poorer member states to migrate to wealthier ones such as Germany and Britain. In the popular press this is often portrayed as foreign scroungers cashing in on the host state’s generous benefits.If migrants come in significant numbers to Britain it’s likely many will require financial support due to job shortages. If they confound the scurrilous stereotype and find employment, they’ll accept low wage levels, undermining British workers.A regular supply of cheaper labour benefits only capitalism. It becomes more difficult for workers to become unionised and organise action to fight for better wages and conditions if employers have a ready supply of desperate migrant workers to call on.Also there’s the question of social destabilisation, shortages of housing, school places and health care caused by a sudden influx inflating local populations. A lack of affordable housing in many parts of Britain as well as waiting lists for medical appointments and treatment already exist.The National Audit Office reported (March 2013) that 20% of schools are already at or above capacity with many more close to being full. By 2014 there will be a need for 250,000 new schools places, rising to 400,000 by 2018.This is just to cater for British born children, the number of which is already boosted by previous migrations. A further incoming of migrant children must seriously exacerbate this situation. And while racial differences are minimal if not non-existent, the same is not true for cultural differences.Multi-lingual schools are lauded by some, but if migrant children do not learn English they are condemned to ghettoisation, along with their parents. Programmes for teaching English are an added expense to already stretched educational budgets.Previous migrations suggest incomers choose to live close by each other, a natural human response to settling in an alien country. This though further reinforces a ghetto mentality, effectively dividing one community of workers from another.There are already Romanians and Bulgarians arriving ahead of 2014 when they’re eligible to move freely around Europe. Registering as self-employed, becoming a “Big Issue” seller, means they can be issued with National Insurance numbers and claim housing, council tax and child benefits.When movement restrictions are lifted at the end of this year it seems likely many more will migrate westwards in search if a better life. Not only does such migration exacerbate difficulties for the working class of the host country, it does nothing to alleviate the prime cause of such population movements.Romanians and Bulgarians would better serve their interests by facing up to and organising to overcome the economic difficulties in their own countries, difficulties created by the very capitalism exploiting them as migrant workers.To reiterate, migration is not a racial, but an economic issue, and a crucial one for the working class. As long as Britain remains shackled to the EU then the borders cannot be secured.If Britain is to re-build it must exercise control over both capital and labour movements. Migration is an international issue that can only be dealt with at national level.The British working class, formed from a plethora of racial origins, must defend itself against the deleterious economic impact on wages and working conditions the free movement of labour entails. This is reason enough to demand a referendum and vote to leave the European Union.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>imarxman.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/migration-the-big-issue/
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Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 16:17:54 GMT
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Post by dodger on Aug 24, 2013 5:00:17 GMT
Open border
Under EU rules Britain must open borders next year to Bulgarian and Romanian citizens. The Labour government did so for Polish and other eastern European immigrants in 2004, predicting that a few thousand would arrive; the eventual total was over 400,000.
Would new migrants have jobs to come to? No, many will end up on benefits or begging or both. There are already 2.3 million EU nationals living here, 551,000 of whom are unemployed or economically inactive.
Mass immigration is not to meet our economic or social needs, but to obey the EU’s imposition of free movement of labour. Immigration is an economic issue. A greater supply of labour forces wages down further and puts more strain on our housing, healthcare and education.
The government says it cannot go against the EU; instead it will tighten benefit rules – no doubt hitting British workers again in the process. Only by leaving the EU this year could we stop a repeat of what happened after 2004
Undermining national identity
In evidence to the House of Lords EU home affairs sub committee Peter Sutherland, Head of the Global Forum on Migration and Development, said the European Union should be doing its best to undermine the sense of homogeneity (single identity) of its member countries in favour of an open immigration policy.
Sutherland is also non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International and former chairman of BP, and has reportedly attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group. He admitted that the Global Forum on Migration and Development had received some funding from the British government.
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Post by dodger on Aug 24, 2013 5:05:49 GMT
With the anti-trade union laws as the backdrop, capitalism has deployed its favoured method of attack to devastating effect: unemployment, intensified by the exporting of jobs and the importing of labour…
Mobility of labour: why the conspiracy of silence?
WORKERS, JUNE 2010 ISSUE
Nothing stands still. We either progress or regress. And what we have had for the last 13 years is the continuation of the [Thatcher] counter-revolution. It is the attempt to destroy any semblance of collective thought and organisation, to prevent the possibility of us moving forward to taking power.
Earlier this year, it was exposed in the London Evening Standard that the Labour Party had made a conscious decision in 2000 to begin the process of opening the doors to the largest mass migration this country had ever known, with some three million people having settled here. They boasted that they have created two million new jobs, but the Office of National Statistics tells us that 9 out of 10 of these have gone to foreigners coming in to Britain. And Labour told us that they lose no sleep over the population of Britain going to 70 million and beyond!
We are told that everybody has the right to better themselves and we must therefore support the freedom of movement of labour. So, for example, we have the disgraceful spectacle of teachers, doctors and nurses being poached from countries that struggle to afford their training while we have people with the very same skills out of work or in jobs they weren't trained for. And worse still is being planned.
While in his role of EU Trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson initiated the negotiations for the introduction of a little-known clause to be included in future trade agreements between the EU and countries outside of the EU. Known as Mode 4 (see page 11), the intention is to open up further the EU's labour markets to cheap labour.
Global capital
The sole purpose of this is to entrench the power of global capital so that transnational corporations can move labour around the globe from, say, India, paying only the minimum wage (and India is even arguing that the minimum wage is too much). And because of the Lisbon treaty, all things EU apply here.
The desired effect of mass migration is the destabilising and undermining of working-class organisation and communities, and the extraction of ever-greater profit through use of cheap unorganised labour. Until very recently mere mention of the issue was shouted down as racist.
Well, the engineering construction workers of Britain changed all that and firmly placed the issue on the agenda when workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery walked out at the beginning of last year.
With employers bringing in over 400 Italian and Portuguese workers, denying those already on site the right to work, these construction workers struck, demanding British Jobs for British Workers, BJ4BW.
In defiance of the anti-trade union laws, they were swiftly followed by workers from over 20 other sites up and down Britain, capturing the imagination of workers not only across this country but the world. Because of the support neither the government nor the EU dared challenge the “illegality” of the action fearful of fanning the flames.
Ever since, BJ4BW as a slogan has been vilified by the main parties and ultra left alike as racist. Interesting though is how there is common ground between international capital and the ultra left – sharing as they do the position of calling for unfettered movement of labour and no border controls.
But we have come a long way since those strikes and all opinion polls register that this is one of the major concerns that people have in Britain, and to demand the right to work in our own country is recognised as correct and not racist.
Unite poll
A poll of members conducted by the Unite union said the same, but you won’t find the union mentioning it, and the main parties conspired to try to avoid it at the election. Yet workers forced it onto the agenda. The same was true with regards to the EU – a conspiracy of silence gave way at the 2005 election to a promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. As we know, they have all reneged.
When the question of immigration is put, however, all these parties make righteous noises about border controls and regulating those coming in from outside the EU. Their attempts to sidestep the issue of the EU become more futile as workers become ever more aware that the main source of migrant labour is from the EU, particularly the countries that have recently joined.
The current financial turmoil in the eurozone raises the prospect of ever greater movement, and membership of the EU means we have to accept them. But if we say we don’t want to, that we want to put a stop to further influx, what mechanisms have we got to stop it - to assert our democratic right in our own land?
It has been fashionable to talk of globalisation as if it were a thing beyond the control of mankind. Some unions and others think that we need one big global union to combat the power of multinational capital. They would have us spend more than a few lifetimes in the vain struggle to do what? To stand toe to toe with our exploiters on a more equal footing?
All that boils down to is that we are still exploited by capitalism. And can you really expect someone in, say, an Indian call centre, who is offered work at more than ten times their national average wage, to reject that work – even if they were in a global union – because it has been taken away from their brothers and sisters in, say, Britain?
When international capital demands the death of the nation state, the answer is not to call for measures that enable that. The way to challenge the power of multinational companies is not by trying to build a global union but to assert control of our own borders through workers’ nationalism. You can’t have inter-nationalism without first having nationalism, and for workers of all countries to do likewise. Then when we say to global capital, “You can’t operate here except by our rules”, what power would they actually have?
• This article is part of a speech given at the CPBML May Day celebration in Conway Hall, London, on 1 May.
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Post by dodger on Aug 28, 2013 6:57:25 GMT
MP Frank Field has called for a debate on immigration. Jack Dromey, Deputy General Secretary of the T&GWU, has called for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Here's a contribution to that debate from a working class and trade union perspective...
Let's have a working class debate on immigration
WORKERS, OCT 2006 ISSUE
The government forecast that there would be 15,000 immigrants from Eastern Europe in the year after their entry to the European Union on 1 January 2004. The actual number was 300,000, followed by another 300,000 in 2005. Due to the increased supply of labour, wages in several unskilled and low-skilled job sectors have fallen, hitting the indigenous working class. The extra demand for housing has forced prices and rents ever higher, and in many cities students now find it almost impossible to get part-time jobs to help them through college.
Consequently, three-quarters of the population now wants far stricter limits on immigrant numbers, according to an Ipsos MORI poll carried out on behalf of the Sunday Times between 11 and 13 August: 63 per cent say immigration laws should be "much tougher", up from 58 per cent 18 months ago, while a further 11 per cent say there should be no more immigration. 77 per cent think the government should set a strict limit on the number of immigrants allowed into Britain each year. Just 14 per cent of people strongly agree that immigration is "generally good" for Britain, with double that number taking the opposite view.
Incidentally, the same poll also revealed widespread impatience with Tony Blair, with almost half of the nearly 1,000 people questioned believing that he should resign immediately.
This popular pressure against unlimited and uncontrolled immigration may force the government to impose limits on migrants from Romania and Bulgaria when the two countries join the EU in 1 January. The government predicts that 350,000 Romanians will come to Britain next year. Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, told the BBC that migration would be "properly controlled". Home Secretary John Reid said, "I don't believe in the free movement of labour: I believe the situation should be managed. You hear the same from ethnic minorities. There's nothing racist about it." But the Home Office insists that no final decision has been made and the Foreign Office is lobbying hard for no limits to be introduced.
Whose decision is it?
The point is, who decides? In a democracy, the majority should decide, even if some think they are wrong. What does it say about Britain, if the government imposes its view, against the clearly expressed wishes of the majority of the British people?
Immigration is and always has been a mechanism for depressing wages and undermining working class organisation. That is why the government and the CBI have declared that immigration is a good thing. To its shame, the TUC has endorsed their sentiments despite unemployment approaching 2 million and the decline in average earnings, including bonuses (National Office of Statistics June 2006).
And removing skilled labour from other economies does nothing for the development of those nations denuded of those skills; nor does it assist in the development of an organised working class in those countries. In the past 12 months both the South African Health Minister and the Pakistani ambassador to Britain have put in pleas to Britain to stop seizing their nurses and computer programmers respectively. Their polite requests have been ignored.
The West Indian immigrants who came here in the fifties and sixties were invited to take the low-paid jobs that British workers could not afford to take. This helped to maintain the low wages of those jobs, although to the credit of the unions, these workers did become organised. The immigrants from the Indian subcontinent who came to fill jobs in the textile industry were by and large confined to the lower-paid jobs. Sometimes unions such as the Knitwear and Hosiery Workers Union, as it was then, would insist that highly skilled knitting jobs be ring-fenced for British workers in order to maintain wage rates while lower-paid, less skilled jobs would be reserved for immigrants who would be outside the union. This is history – workers' defence of their skills and livelihood in a bad situation.
There has always been a relationship between immigration and wage rates. Today, that relationship is no different but much more critical. Our borders are open, immigration is on a gigantic scale and we face an influx of cheap Romanian and Bulgarian labour from January 2007.
Better life?
Of course migrants aspire to a better life, but they should fight for it in their own country – or how will it ever make progress. Poland's economy, for example, is being hamstrung by a shortage of workers. Even drafting in convicts to do essential work is not plugging the gap. And the situation in some African countries is even more dire.
Young men who abandon their country make things worse, not better. And we in Britain need to fight for progress here.
Further, British working people should not be cast as racists or against people from other nations. The question of training our own people is fundamental.
Employers moan at the lack of skills – quite understandably – but seek the cheap way forward. The same is occurring in the public sector. For example, local government will sponsor overseas workers to gain British recognised qualifications – running courses in London for Australian, New Zealand and South African teachers to boost their qualifications to British standards while completely failing to produce courses that could raise Londoners with qualifications just short of the required level.
People who squeak that racism is the core of the opposition to an unfettered movement of labour need to look at some of the consequences. White teachers from Commonwealth countries get preference over mature Londoners (black and white) who would otherwise be fast-tracked into teaching. Some of the inner London boroughs have unemployment levels (mainly black people) of over 8 per cent, yet jobs are going to EU migrants (mainly white). What can be more racist in our context than denying someone indigenous work by importing overseas labour?
Here are a few ideas to throw into the debate about what should be done:
Restrict the free movement of labour to Britain from Romania and Bulgaria if these countries join the EU on 1 January. Better still, don't let them join.
Control the export of capital. Because of the deliberately engineered skills shortage – abolition of apprenticeship, etc – manufacturing employers are threatening to move production abroad to Eastern Europe or China if their workforce refuses to accept Polish, Lithuanian or other East European skilled workers whom they want to employ on the National Minimum Wage instead of the skilled rate. How might we deal with this?
Well, one way would be to put in place controls on the export of capital to prevent them carrying out their threat. We could then insist that all immigrant workers require work permits, which would only be issued if the employers agreed to take on and train local workers to replace immigrant labour when they qualified or became indentured, and on condition that the employer paid the rate for the job. Government funds could assist this training. The immigrant labour would then be required to leave the country when this process was complete.
Prove no one can be recruited here. In the case of unskilled immigrant labour, perhaps the work permits would only be issued after the employer could prove that it had exhausted all means of local recruitment including substantially increasing pay. The employer would be required to pay the immigrant labour the highest rate of pay on which it had failed to recruit local labour.
The immigrant labour contracts would be limited to a defined duration when the employer would be forced to try and recruit local labour again. If the employer is contracted to a public service, the contract would be terminated if the employer failed to recruit local non-immigrant labour on the second attempt. Immigrant labour would be required to leave the country at the end of any work permit unless it was proven that it was impossible to recruit local labour on established rates of pay, in which case they could stay as British citizens and British workers.
Secure our borders. The concept of an amnesty for illegal immigrants is foolish if we don't have control over our own borders, as it would simply be followed by another wave of immigration. The first step must be to secure and control our borders. Every sovereign country has the right to know and control who comes in and who goes out of the country. Then maybe we should tackle the problem for what it is – 21st century slavery.
If a ship repair yard employer on Tyneside brings in a Polish workforce on the National Minimum Wage rather than the rate for the job, houses them in cabins inside the yard, and rotates them every ten weeks for a new workforce to prevent unionisation, that's slavery. People smugglers, gangsters and gang masters, and the new breed of employment agencies are the new slave traders, and illegal immigrants working in sweatshop conditions are the new slaves.
Let's outlaw new slavery in all its forms with punitive sentences appropriate to slavery. Any employer paying below the National Minimum Wage should be treated similarly. After this, we could put the illegal immigrants to the same test as skilled or unskilled immigrants referred to above. Those who choose not to work, or are involved in the black market or crime to survive, will have to leave the country.
Basic ideas to protect Britain
These are very basic ideas designed to protect British manufacturing, British workers and wage rates. To secure our borders we should bring British troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan to help create a border, security and customs force along with existing agencies and maybe a strong unit to enforce anti-slavery and immigration laws. That surely should be within the power of a sovereign state.
Unfortunately, all of this would be incompatible with EU laws and policy. In fact, the expanded EU was solely about free movement of labour and capital to help capitalism survive. This means that the British parliament has no real control over issues such as immigration and so the first step to controlling it would have to be withdrawal from the European Union.
The notion, shared by those on the ultra left through to the leadership of the TUC, that everyone in the world has a right to come here to work must be quashed: it is anti working class. If we decide to do these necessary things, we decide to take charge of the state ourselves as a class.
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Well that truly put the cat amongst the pigeons. Shrieks from ultra-left, pious liberals and social democrats alike. Crude attempts to shut down debate failed abysmally. Hysterical condemnation without any thought or engagement ensured a total isolation from workers genuine concerns and grievance. Perversely any number of the ordinary members of the ultra left agreed privately with many of the points raised. Oh dear...did they so fear being tarnished by accusations of racism that they could not even raise their heads above the parapet?How pathetic. How predictable. Skin pigment, surely an obsession of Nazis, not 'right' thinking people. A Tsunami of opposition to mass immigration and the EU has put the ultra left on the backfoot. Can they all be fascist, racist or worse DAILY MAIL READERS? If yer need to think about it....yer lost.
With 86% of people consistently polled, expressing opposition to mass immigration, the CPB ML intervention was appropriate, timely. Thoughtful. Their contribution to the debate sidelined the BNP SWP bigots and firmly set about reclaiming the debate as a class issue at every level of the Trade Union movement. I don't suppose for a minute the ultra left babble about "OPEN BORDERS" will be silenced. Some derive sadistic pleasure from watching them flog a dead horse. Though many have jumped ship on this one issue. Fewer are prepared to spout on about a topic that clearly runs against the interests of workers here or afar.
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Post by dodger on Aug 28, 2013 7:14:39 GMT
Don't mention the migration
WORKERS, OCTOBER 2008 ISSUE
Immigration has pushed population density in England to a higher level than any other major country in Europe. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show there are 395 people per square kilometre in England. This is an increase of five per square kilometre in the past two years.
While unemployment is rising, 2.54 million new National Insurance numbers were issued to overseas nationals between 2002/3 and 2006/7. New immigrants numbered 565,000 in 2005, following 582,000 in 2004.
The ruling class promotes unlimited immigration, claiming, as usual, that it knows better than we do what is good for us. The ultra-left, as usual, supports the ruling class by spreading the slanderous lie that it’s racism that’s fuelling popular opposition to immigration.
This magazine has been talking about migration – into and out of Britain – for quite a few years, as the article on page 14 shows. We reject utterly the idea that discussion of migration is somehow “off limits”. In this we have little in common with the official structures of the trade union movement, which has stood by while immigration and unemployment have soared and which will not countenance a proper debate.
But that debate is taking place, nevertheless. A new national poll shows that the vast majority of us, regardless of party affiliation, believe that immigration should be sharply reduced: 81 per cent of Labour voters, 83 per cent of Liberal Democrats and 89 per cent of Conservatives.
Perhaps more pertinently, a survey by Unite of 100,000 of its members in marginal seats, reported in The Guardian, showed that immigration headed the list of their concerns, but you won’t find that reflected on the union’s websites...or indeed mentioned as a concern.
The newspaper commented: “The high number citing immigration was regarded as an embarrassment in some parts of the union.” That it should be seen as such speaks volumes for the blinkered and isolated world which many trade unions officials – lay as well as full time – inhabit.
The European Commission, meanwhile, predicts that Britain’s population will be 77 million by 2058. Ten million of the additional 16 million will be immigrants, they say.
You don’t need to be a statistician to work out that adding that number to Britain’s population will not make housing affordable, nor take cars off the road, nor make school places any easier to find. But it will increase the available labour force, and help employers drive down wages.
That, surely, is something the labour movement can have a debate about.
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Post by dodger on Aug 30, 2013 9:11:18 GMT
Useful survey of the effects of migration on Britain, 16 Jan 2008
This William Podmore review is from: Exploited: Migrant Labour in the New Global Economy (Paperback)
Toby Shelley, a journalist with the Financial Times, shows how abuse of migrant labour power is part of the capitalist system. He focuses on Britain, looking in detail at migrant workers in catering, cleaning, building, harvesting, prostitution and domestic work.
All migrant workers are part of the working class of their host countries, and so should organise in trade unions. By contrast, the Labour government colludes with the employers, denying undocumented migrants any workplace rights beyond the most basic human rights. As Shelley writes, "there is also good reason to believe that the very migration that governments of the rich world make illegal they also tolerate, in effect colluding with exploitative employers." The status of illegal entrants enables the employers to maximise exploitation.
Capitalism has an ever-increasing demand for an ever-larger supply of migrant labour. Shelley notes the recent EU-driven acceleration of immigration. The documented inflow to Britain rose from 60,000 in 1999 to 250,000 in 2004, mostly from the EU accession countries. Between 2004 and 2006, 600,000 EU accession state workers entered Britain. He cites an estimate that the arrival of accession-state workers increased Britain's unemployment by 0.2-0.3%.
His Chapter 3, on migrants' impact on the host societies, claims that they benefit the host economies. But who, exactly, gains? He notes, "the benefits are reaped directly by employers." He states that employers "drive down labour costs ... through the use of migrants." He writes cautiously, "It may be that without the reservoir of migrant labour, wages and conditions would be raised." As he sums up, "It is no surprise that the loudest voices defending the influx of migrant labour into the UK have come from employers' organisations."
A recent article in the National Institute Economic Review concludes, "owners of capital gain from immigration and people who supply labour in direct competition with immigrants lose out." A US estimate was that this competition reduced wages for those workers by 5%. An ITEM Club report noted, "the downward pressure new workers have exerted on real wages."
As Professor David Blanchflower of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has explained, "The presence of highly productive workers from the A10 [the central and eastern European countries recently admitted to the EU] who are prepared to work for relatively low wages along with associated increases in actual unemployment are what has helped to keep wages down."
However, Shelley has no chapter on migrants' effects on the countries they leave, just a section of less than three pages. He mentions British governments `systematically pillaging nurses and doctors from developing countries'. Since 1997, more than 80,000 overseas nurses have been admitted to the UK register. Labour-exporting countries carry the costs of rearing and educating skilled workers. South Africa spent $1 billion educating health workers who then emigrated. In Africa as a whole, 30-50% of health graduates leave for Britain or the USA. Some countries, like Ghana, lose more nurses in a year than they train.
As he writes, "while migration comprises millions of individual dilemmas, decisions and histories, those aggregate into a stripping by the global North of the labour and skills of the South. Inasmuch as the impetus to migrate is created by the trade rules and financial institutions dominated by the North, this constitutes systematic pillage."
Is this acceptable? Apparently Shelley thinks so, because he opposes all efforts to control it, writing, apparently unaware that he contradicts himself, "the enforcement of entry rules is impossible and enforcement measures do no more than reduce the net number of undocumented workers in the country."
Should we accept the conditions that constantly produce `downward pressure on wages'? Don't we need to curtail the employers' power to recruit from abroad?
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