UK Politics - From Russia with Love

[Werthead]

21 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Ummmm...

It's inevitable when you make free movement arrangements with countries that have significantly lower GDPs to yours that the movement will be mainly one way. 

Most working class people can't take advantage of many opportunities abroad because they don't speak foreign languages fluently, like most British people. Plus, people have family and community ties. Immigration has doubtlessly boosted the economy, but that doesn't mean it has been good for everyone, and it has been the lowest paid who have got the shit end of the stick again. 

The Czech Republic is a Central European country (I've made that mistake before).

You can get by only speaking English in Dublin and Amsterdam as well, and could probably muddle through in a lot of other countries as long as you weren't doing a higher-end job that involved speaking to local people unlikely to speak English. We're actually much better off than most other European countries in that we can go to countries and muddle through in English, whilst Romanians, Hungarians, Czechians, even Spanish and French have no choice but to learn English to come here.

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Out of interest, can anyone quote any examples of industries or skill sets where UK workers were driven out or disadvantaged by EU migrants willing to work for less? The only candidate I can think of offhand is fruit picking, but the general opinion on that seems to be that UK people are simply no longer willing to do that for any money.

 

It's simplistic to say "they won't do it for that money," it's that they can't do it for that money. Minimum wage jobs and certainly part-time, seasonal minimum wage jobs no longer remotely pay for the cost of living: a vast swathe of working British people are in receipt of state benefits to make up the massive shortfall between what the minimum wage is and what it should be (the difference is about £2 per hour, and growing).

Immigrant labour can be brought in to live in relatively cramped conditions and work like demons for 3-4 months or so and then go home again, with exchange rates usually meaning they have quite a large amount of money by their home standards. For people living full-time in Britain, that's not only undesirable, it's utterly impractical.

When I was working in London a year or so back, I was on more than twice the British minimum wage and in the end it barely covered the cost of rent 55 miles out of London (and my rent is considerably cheaper than most people's in a similar property) and the commuting costs, which were just under £5K a year (now they're considerably over), to travel 110 miles three days a week. I was offered my old job back recently and had to decline as the rapid increases in rail fare made it completely impossible to do the job.

The UK's cost of living is insane, particularly in the south, but a lot of the country suffers from this.

[mankytoes]

24 minutes ago, A wilding said:

Would it though? I don't know if you have ever tried it, but it is hard labour. I don't think I would be willing unless the alternative was something like starvation.

But of course the limiting factor is actually being somewhere near competitive with foreign imports. So if you like I will rephrase "any money" to "any reasonable amount of money".

 

I know it's hard work, I haven't done it personally but I have friends who have done it abroad. Of course, how hard depends on the speed they expect you to go, the conditions, the breaks, etc. I did washing up and it was the only job I've found intolerable. But that wasn't just the work itself, the kitchen was insanely hot, I got a lot of stick, very long hours, low wages, etc. 

I think the particular issue with fruit picking is it's seasonal. If you can't get another job off season, you aren't going to get enough to make a living. So it specifically suits short term immigrants. It seems English people are more likely to do that job abroad. 

Have you read about the conditions in Amazon warehouses? And a lot of those workers are British. A lot of British people work very hard for low wages. 

[Werthead]

Just now, mankytoes said:

Have you read about the conditions in Amazon warehouses? And a lot of those workers are British. A lot of British people work very hard for low wages. 

A lot of the conditions in Amazon warehouses are - or were - illegal, and they've had their knuckles rapped hard over it. Whether it's improved things is unclear, but they can't juts break the law. One example was when they forced people to go through a metal detector and bag search when they leave to make sure they don't steal anything. This should be on the company's time and that if someone finished their shift at 5.30pm and were then stuck in the bag search queue for 30 minutes, they had to be paid for it. Amazon got in the shit over that.

British employers have been getting away with utter murder under the Coalition and the Tories though, especially since employment law was degraded in 2012 to overwhelmingly favour the employer at the expense of the employee. Employment law in Britain now is effectively optional, as most employees are simply unable to afford to take their employers to court even for blatant breaches of the law.

[Spockydog]

51 minutes ago, Sophelia said:

My next-door neighbour who is a builder by trade (he does renovations and refits e.g. of pubs and general odd jobs) claims that in London he can't get work in this area any more because it's being done by moonlighting illegal workers, or something like that.  But he actually lives in the North so I'm not sure how much direct experience he has, or if it's word of mouth/rumour.

My Mum had her house completely renovated a few years back. For my sins, it fell upon me to book and supervise the tradesmen. Of the countless quotes I got from plumbers, plasterers, electricians and carpenters, nobody was cheaper than the Eastern Europeans. Some of those guys did great work for a really, really good price.

 

[mankytoes]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

A lot of the conditions in Amazon warehouses are - or were - illegal, and they've had their knuckles rapped hard over it. Whether it's improved things is unclear, but they can't juts break the law. One example was when they forced people to go through a metal detector and bag search when they leave to make sure they don't steal anything. This should be on the company's time and that if someone finished their shift at 5.30pm and were then stuck in the bag search queue for 30 minutes, they had to be paid for it. Amazon got in the shit over that.

British employers have been getting away with utter murder under the Coalition and the Tories though, especially since employment law was degraded in 2012 to overwhelmingly favour the employer at the expense of the employee. Employment law in Britain now is effectively optional, as most employees are simply unable to afford to take their employers to court even for blatant breaches of the law.

Immigrant labour can be brought in to live in relatively cramped conditions and work like demons for 3-4 months or so and then go home again, with exchange rates usually meaning they have quite a large amount of money by their home standards. For people living full-time in Britain, that's not only undesirable, it's utterly impractical.

When I was working in London a year or so back, I was on more than twice the British minimum wage and in the end it barely covered the cost of rent 55 miles out of London (and my rent is considerably cheaper than most people's in a similar property) and the commuting costs, which were just under £5K a year (now they're considerably over), to travel 110 miles three days a week. I was offered my old job back recently and had to decline as the rapid increases in rail fare made it completely impossible to do the job.

The UK's cost of living is insane, particularly in the south, but a lot of the country suffers from this.

Yeah, it just shows that their intention is essentially to treat workers as badly as the law allows them to. The point is, they still get the staff, and a lot of those staff are British. They don't have to hire immigrants, they just put their distribution warehouses where people are desperate for work (an option the fruit farm owner doesn't have, of course). 

Exactly. Would the people who make snarky remarks about the British poor be willing to live in those conditions to compete for those wages? Of course not. It doesn't even occur to these people that people from lower income backgrounds want the same basic dignity of living situation that they have. They're clearly just feckless.

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

My Mum had her house completely renovated a few years back. For my sins, it fell upon me to book and supervise the tradesmen. Of the countless quotes I got from plumbers, plasterers, electricians and carpenters, nobody was cheaper than the Eastern Europeans. Some of those guys did great work for a really, really good price.

 

And that, many times over, is what causes the unemployment and reduction in wages. 

If people think I'm really having a go at Eastern Europeans for coming over completely legally (I have every sympathy with people who don't come legally in many situations, let alone those who do) and working hard, I assure you I'm not. I wouldn't have the slightest moral hesitation in doing the same thing. That doesn't mean what they're doing is good for people on low incomes in this country. I would not want to close the border to people from these countries, I've met some really smart young people from those countries, and immigration from that region is doubtlessly good for us. But I do think there should be some restrictions. France, Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, I'm happy to have free movement with these countries. 

[Spockydog]

6 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

If people think I'm really having a go at Eastern Europeans for coming over completely legally (I have every sympathy with people who don't come legally in many situations, let alone those who do) and working hard, I assure you I'm not. I wouldn't have the slightest moral hesitation in doing the same thing. That doesn't mean what they're doing is good for people on low incomes in this country. I would not want to close the border to people from these countries, I've met some really smart young people from those countries, and immigration from that region is doubtlessly good for us. But I do think there should be some restrictions. France, Germany, Netherlands, Scandinavia, I'm happy to have free movement with these countries. 

That's some pretty blatant racism right there.

[mankytoes]

39 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

That's some pretty blatant racism right there.

I don't know if you're joking, because the countries I'm proposing we stop freedom of movement with are actually whiter than the ones I named. I don't mind a bit of trolling but that's a nasty way of doing it. 

If you want to point racism at a system, how about one that allows freedom of movement between a group of all majority white countries and zero non-white ones...

[Spockydog]

51 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

I don't know if you're joking, because the countries I'm proposing we stop freedom of movement with are actually whiter than the ones I named. I don't mind a bit of trolling but that's a nasty way of doing it. 

If you want to point racism at a system, how about one that allows freedom of movement between a group of all majority white countries and zero non-white ones...

I read what you wrote as you'd place restrictions on Eastern Europeans, but allow free movement of French, German, and Scandis...

Is that not what you meant?

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

For instance, immigrants could very well decrease the power of unions in some sectors.
Lastly, the idea that free movement (of labor and corporations) primarily benefits corporations is rather uncontroversial.

Which is primarily what I was getting at - quite apart from any issue of wages, free movement of labour inherently strengthens the negotiating power of employers. And free movement of capital certainly strengthens the power of the investment class vis-a-vis an elected government.

[mankytoes]

8 hours ago, Spockydog said:

I read what you wrote as you'd place restrictions on Eastern Europeans, but allow free movement of French, German, and Scandis...

Is that not what you meant?

 

Well, those were just examples, the point is freedom of movement is only effective between countries of similar wealth. As I have Polak blood in my veins, it's not out of desire to keep slavic stock out of our Anglo-Saxon paradise (your interpretation)?

[Spockydog]

6 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

Well, those were just examples, the point is freedom of movement is only effective between countries of similar wealth. As I have Polak blood in my veins, it's not out of desire to keep slavic stock out of our Anglo-Saxon paradise (your interpretation)?

So, yeah. Pretty blatant racism.

[lessthanluke]

13 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

The UK's cost of living is insane, particularly in the south, but a lot of the country suffers from this.

Yeah I work like 60 hours a week and just about break even. Hah.

[HexMachina]

I almost wrote a joke/sarcastic post last night saying “how can it’s be racism, they’re all majority white countries!” But thought it was too stupid of a joke.

lo and behold, reality is worse than bad humour

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

14 hours ago, Werthead said:

The Czech Republic is a Central European country (I've made that mistake before).

You can get by only speaking English in Dublin and Amsterdam as well, and could probably muddle through in a lot of other countries as long as you weren't doing a higher-end job that involved speaking to local people unlikely to speak English. We're actually much better off than most other European countries in that we can go to countries and muddle through in English, whilst Romanians, Hungarians, Czechians, even Spanish and French have no choice but to learn English to come here.

I'm not English; I'm an American. But I could get by every single day here in Vienna, Austria without speaking a single word of Deutsch, because English is that prevalent nearly everywhere. I even remember sitting in a German-language course at Uni Wien several years ago ro revisit my lost German. it was composed of an international class of 20 people, with only three native English speakers (myself, one Brit, and one Canadian) and the rest from different countries, all of whom spoke perfectly and entirely to each other in English. One of my greatest barriers to properly learning German in my 3 years here has been the sheer prevalence of English proficient speakers in Austria.

[mormont]

16 hours ago, SeanF said:

WRT the EU vote generally, Yougov, Ipsos Mori, and Lord Ashcroft all surveyed very large numbers of people, in order to demographically profile Leave and Remain voters.  Overall, about 60% of Conservatives, and about 36% of Labour voters supported Leave, as did about 63% of voters in groups C2, D, and E.  Given that the latter were 11% more in favour of Brexit than the population as a whole, and that Labour voters were 16% less in favour of Brexit than the population as a whole, I'd estimate that Labour voters from groups C2, D, and E voted about 47% or so in favour of Brexit.  

So, that would imply the majority (53%) voted Remain?

16 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Now I don't really want to get into the debate... But I have to say this: although immigration hardly seems to lower wages, from my point of view this has never been the issue. The real issue is how wages would evolve in some industries without immigration. And because such a question is speculative in nature, it is pretty much  impossible to answer such a question.
To be clear: while immigration doesn't seem to significantly lower wages, there is no way to know whether it doesn't prevent them from rising in some sectors of the economy. The political impact is also impossible to assess, i.e. how immigration affects the balance of power between employers and employees. For instance, immigrants could very well decrease the power of unions in some sectors.
Lastly, the idea that free movement (of labor and corporations) primarily benefits corporations is rather uncontroversial.

We're going back to the chauvinistic argument, though, where immigrant workers are portrayed not as members of the working class but as threats to it: where the only 'working class' that is held to matter consists of people born in the country under discussion. 

As for the last sentence, what is surely uncontroversial is that the free movement of capital without corresponding free movement of labour is definitely beneficial to corporations. Under those circumstances, corporations are free to play governments off against each other to supply them with jobs.

[mankytoes]

3 hours ago, Spockydog said:

So, yeah. Pretty blatant racism.

You think high income countries are a race? I could include Japan and South Korea if that would clarify the point to you? I don't know if you know Eastern European politics, but they generally don't feel their countries benefit from the high levels of emigration, it's a big issue in several nations. 

I hope you're just trolling, otherwise you're proving it's impossible to discuss immigration without someone making silly accusations of racism.

2 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

I almost wrote a joke/sarcastic post last night saying “how can it’s be racism, they’re all majority white countries!” But thought it was too stupid of a joke.

lo and behold, reality is worse than bad humour

In future, there will be more equality between immigration applications from people of different races, as opposed to the current system where Europeans have a massive advantage. 

[Spockydog]

2 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

You think high income countries are a race? I could include Japan and South Korea if that would clarify the point to you? I don't know if you know Eastern European politics, but they generally don't feel their countries benefit from the high levels of emigration, it's a big issue in several nations. 

I hope you're just trolling, otherwise you're proving it's impossible to discuss immigration without someone making silly accusations of racism.

You do realise that racism isn't just about ethnicity? Well, actually, you clearly don't.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

2 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

You think high income countries are a race? I could include Japan and South Korea if that would clarify the point to you? I don't know if you know Eastern European politics, but they generally don't feel their countries benefit from the high levels of emigration, it's a big issue in several nations. 

I hope you're just trolling, otherwise you're proving it's impossible to discuss immigration without someone making silly accusations of racism.

"I can't be racist against Slavs, because I have Japanese and Korean friends."

[Spockydog]

12 minutes ago, mankytoes said:

You think high income countries are a race? I could include Japan and South Korea if that would clarify the point to you? I don't know if you know Eastern European politics, but they generally don't feel their countries benefit from the high levels of emigration, it's a big issue in several nations. 

I hope you're just trolling, otherwise you're proving it's impossible to discuss immigration without someone making silly accusations of racism.

In future, there will be more equality between immigration applications from people of different races, as opposed to the current system where Europeans have a massive advantage. 

I, myself, am Scottish. I have a pale, sickly complexion that could most accurately be described as North Sea Peely-Wally. If I turn round and say I don't want any Irishmen on my team because they're generally drunken, lazy bastards, would I be absolved of accusations of racism because we share the same fucking skin colour? No I would most certainly not. 

ETA: And before anyone starts, my grandparents are Irish. 

 

[mankytoes]

17 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I, myself, am Scottish. I have a pale, sickly complexion that could most accurately be described as North Sea Peely-Wally. If I turn round and say I don't want any Irishmen on my team because they're generally drunken, lazy bastards, would I be absolved of accusations of racism because we share the same fucking skin colour? No I would most certainly not. 

ETA: And before anyone starts, my grandparents are Irish. 

 

But I haven't said anything negative about Eastern Europeans, have I?

Mine are Polish Jews. So argue the argument if you can, but drop the racism shit.