The EU: IN or OUT?

savings_my_hobby

JohnRo wrote: »

Simple, divert some of the 'extra £350M a week' to that then... NHS is overrated unless you need it anyway.

Or just come up with an education system that works and an benefit system that is fair.

Schools should stop teaching politics and political correctness, that's what the BBC is for and start teaching the skills employers need or are likely to need in the future.
Benefits should be for those who have paid in and/or served the country not for those who with substance issues and attitude problems.

While we are at it we should stop subsidising low paid workers with Tax Credits, it is up to the employers to pay a wage people can live on. The minimum wage has become the maximum wage in far too many job positions and this is set to get worse with the new NLW set to rise to £9p/h by 2020.
Bosses will try to get around this by employing under 25's instead of people with responsibilities.*


*of course some people are married with all the children they will ever have by the time they are 24 so putting an age cap on the NLW was a stupid idea to begin with. 21 would have been fairer if they had to insist on a age cap.

savings_my_hobby

LHW99 wrote: »

Extra money isn't necessarily the only issue.
Ensuring it gets applied in the right way - say by encouraging training in the fields that are needed - perhaps plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, engineers to mention a few, say by providing the tuition for free, and by decreasing the number of places colleges / universities are allowed to offer for journalism, media studies pro rata
When we have enough plumbers but too few journalists the allocation could be switched.

The thing is with trades (I am an Electrician) is that employers are increasingly taking on unskilled labour and using them in lieu of skilled labour. you can almost get two unskilled guys for the price of one skilled guy.

Most companies seem to take on a lot of apprentices and pay then less than the minimum wage and release them when they are qualified because they are unwilling to meet the wage demands. Some companies I have worked for will not even meet the JIB wage requirements for apprentices, the apprentice has little grounds to complain as they can be replaced within a week and most are unaware of their rights. College courses should touch upon these issues, shame they don't, people complete their training and then end up doing menial work or a force to go self employed without the years of experience necessary to be successful.

LHW99

College courses should touch upon these issues, shame they don't, people complete their training and then end up doing menial work or a force to go self employed without the years of experience necessary to be successful.

Certainly something wrong there.
Perhaps if we accepted fewer people with these qualifications from outside the UK, it might help those who have qualified here to be employed?

BananaRepublic

bigadaj wrote: »

This will vary around the country.

One of the problems is that some of the more vocal anti immigration people are those that wouldn't do the work that those people currently do. That's fine if you are skilled to get other works but you have people claiming benefits who wouldn't touch the lower grade work that is undertaken by immigrants.

That gap needs to be filled, some coercion would be needed in terms of benefit controls, but there are some businesses that would either shut down or have to modify what they do. Farming would fall into the latter camp.

It is true in numerous south eastern cities. I work with many Poles. They are likeable hard working people. But they work on low pay. Are they driving wages down, or filling jobs lazy Brits will not do.

savings_my_hobby

LHW99 wrote: »

Certainly something wrong there.
Perhaps if we accepted fewer people with these qualifications from outside the UK, it might help those who have qualified here to be employed?

I'm not sure that is the issue, the problem in my area is there are no unskilled jobs for the masses of unskilled, not unless you want to work for an agency on a zero hour "turn up when we ask for how long we ask, immediately without hesitation or else you will never be asked again" type contract.
Local employers see this and dangle the carrot of a well paid career, via an apprenticeship scheme, obviously the unemployed jump at this chance only to discover they are being used for cheap labor and minimal time is invested in training them to be quality tradesman.

The unskilled jobs are mainly being taken by people from outside the UK, more and more come every year with no consideration for the multitudes leaving full time education, who are then left to rot on the dole. This means they cannot afford to drive which limits their job prospects further, I mean no transport, no experience no hope unless a friend or family member can vouch for them.

People say English people won't do these unskilled jobs, well English people are not earning up to Five times the minimum wage they would otherwise earn, they have been lied to and told they can be whatever they want instead of having realistic expectations and they are now not even being given a chance even though we can employ half of Europe.

On my 16th Birthday I got a weekend job in a factory, making fruit pots, I had a 16 hour contract with holiday and sick pay and I was still at school, by the time I was 18 I had passed my driving test, owned a car and was two months into my apprenticeship. Now a days 18 year olds are on government funded course to learn how to write a CV. These are the people who will be paying our pensions. Still playing on there playstatons at 23 with no work experience because their opportunities have been given away.

I hope to God we put an end to Free movement of people, any person wishing to live and work in the UK must apply. if we need them we can have them but we must put our own people first and afford them the opportunity to contribute back into society. When these Europhiles grow up and have (unemployed) kids they to will understand.

savings_my_hobby

BananaRepublic wrote: »

It is true in numerous south eastern cities. I work with many Poles. They are likeable hard working people. But they work on low pay. Are they driving wages down, or filling jobs lazy Brits will not do.

There are of course some lazy Brits, who would be less lazy if we replaced handouts with opportunities. Lets not forget the fruit and veg was never rotting in the fields pre 2004.

although it is hard to make someone pull potatoes for the same money as sweeping the floor, but I would argue for 2.5 times the minimum wage like the poles are getting Brits would be queuing up.

Where on planet Earth can Brits go to earn £18p/h AND claim tax credits to pick strawberries? I have picked plenty in my time and would have a go myself for that kind of money. That is the context that must never be forgotten. Of course the poles work hard, they are on a damn good thing and they know it. We would work extremely hard too for those benefits.

Look at it this way, If a Romainian comes here and earns £7,20 p/h for 40 hours a week for five years he or she can go home and get a mortgage if not buy the whole house, If you or I do the same what mortgage can we get? one on a rabbit hutch? even if they were working 20 hours they would be quids in, you or I could not survive on 20 hours at £7.20.

This is why Brits won't do it, that and the fact they can get their rent paid with disposable income without getting out of bed and have all the family time in the world thanks to our benefits system, which they could not achieve on a zero hour contract.

bigadaj

BananaRepublic wrote: »

It is true in numerous south eastern cities. I work with many Poles. They are likeable hard working people. But they work on low pay. Are they driving wages down, or filling jobs lazy Brits will not do.

I'd suggest a bit of both.

bigadaj

savings_my_hobby wrote: »

There are of course some lazy Brits, who would be less lazy if we replaced handouts with opportunities. Lets not forget the fruit and veg was never rotting in the fields pre 2004.

although it is hard to make someone pull potatoes for the same money as sweeping the floor, but I would argue for 2.5 times the minimum wage like the poles are getting Brits would be queuing up.

Where on planet Earth can Brits go to earn £18p/h AND claim tax credits to pick strawberries? I have picked plenty in my time and would have a go myself for that kind of money. That is the context that must never be forgotten. Of course the poles work hard, they are on a damn good thing and they know it. We would work extremely hard too for those benefits.

Look at it this way, If a Romainian comes here and earns £7,20 p/h for 40 hours a week for five years he or she can go home and get a mortgage if not buy the whole house, If you or I do the same what mortgage can we get? one on a rabbit hutch? even if they were working 20 hours they would be quids in, you or I could not survive on 20 hours at £7.20.

This is why Brits won't do it, that and the fact they can get their rent paid with disposable income without getting out of bed and have all the family time in the world thanks to our benefits system, which they could not achieve on a zero hour contract.

It's a combination of these issues.

Pre 2004 then much of the agricultural work was being done by Eastern Europeans, they were just he on six month visas over the summer and returned home in winter.

Not sure where your £18 an hour figure comes from, I know hard and productive workers can certainly earn well above the minimum wage.

It's not logical or even oractical to import large quantities of foreign labour with a large percentage of the native population either comically inactive or under active. If this foreign labour ceases then you need to determined is the gap is filled or whether the work simply doesn't get done in the uk.

The answers are likely to en complicated and multi faceted. The inflated price of housing in the uk is an issue, if it needs to fall it should do so, to keep paying housing benefit in huge amounts is unsustainable. Getting rid of zero hours contracts for many people is an answer, to ensure they aren't kept in limbo between not earning because they're not given enough hours and can't claim benefits.

Receiving benefits for an extended period is too easy, after a set period then a workfare system should be put in place, handing money over for nothing obviously makes work unattractive so at least address that part of the problem. There are costs in doing so but the knocks effects should be beneficial.

Enterprise_1701C

When I was a teenager I used to work part time at a local supermarket. Apparently those are the type of jobs eastern Europeans are taking. That was what gave me a work ethic. On the 14th birthday I started working on Sundays in a garden shop, at 16 I added two evening and Saturdays in a supermarket.

If you cant start doing that as a teenager because eastern Europeans are willing to take the jobs that you would have taken, then how can you learn to work?

If we stop the eastern Europeans coming in and nabbing all the low paid jobs, and make sure the unemployed have more opportunity to work, then maybe, just maybe, this generation will learn to work.

Other than that we will now have the option of telling them that if they don't work they will simply get vouchers for food and that will be it.

As someone else said, there was plenty of people willing to pick fruit and work on the shop floor before we had the flood of immigrants.

I bet Tony Bliar is wishing he hadn't opened the flood gates "to rub the middle classes' noses in it" now - he will never be president of the EU.

treemachine

bigadaj wrote: »

One of the problems is that some of the more vocal anti immigration people are those that wouldn't do the work that those people currently do. That's fine if you are skilled to get other works but you have people claiming benefits who wouldn't touch the lower grade work that is undertaken by immigrants.

That gap needs to be filled, some coercion would be needed in terms of benefit controls, but there are some businesses that would either shut down or have to modify what they do. Farming would fall into the latter camp.

The UK managed to feed itself when half the men were away fighting and there was an flotilla of U boats sinking shipping coming to the UK... I really don't believe the "we are too lazy to pick our own vegetables" argument.


I work on a UK building site, there are Portuguese here doing a skilled job for £5.50 per hour. How is it possible fair that skilled British tradesmen have to compete with wages like that?


If farmers paid a decent wage they would get British workers. However they don't and that's why they cant get British staff.