We’re still in the early days of what might be a long term economic problem, that is, literally huge numbers of economic migrants, (mostly from eastern Europe) who because of the differences in the cost of living there are happy to work for minimum wage, or even illegally below M.W. for six months/a year whatever, spending the bare minimum in our economy and then returning home having remitted the bulk of their pay.
They are then replaced literally on the next flight/bus from E.U.
This means that money which otherwise would have circulated in the U.K creating new jobs and maintaining existing ones is bled off.
As they also are happy to work ignoring basic H&S and welfare requirments (paid holidays etc.) they have effectively put not inconsequential numbers of homegrown workers either out of work, quite often permamently and reduced many others to working for the same very low wages.
In the construction industry especially, qualification fraud within the community of migrant workers from europe is widespread, with Quals, known as “tickets”, printed off of the internet, forged, or the exams sat by ringers.
This is aided and abetted by unscrupulous employers out to maximise profits over quality, and the difficulty of many, if not most Brits to check Slavic names as individuals and their job histories.
If something goes seriously wrong on site it is usually only then that the tickets are discovered to be fraudulant, but the individual disappears home to Poland for a while and then resurfaces in a different region of the U.K. with a new set of duff tickets.
London getting the next Summer Olympics was hailed by many as a huge boost to Polands economy.
I am no leftwinger, but its basically a couple of hundred years of ordinary, and not so ordinary people legislating to receive humane working conditions and basic rights, down the tubes within the last very few years…
The old chestnut that they are doing jobs that Brits don’t want to, is not only nonesense…,
(with the caveat of those who have not long left full time education and who often have been given unrealistic expectations as part of their education)
But a serious insult to the experienced, skilled workers, who have after decades of work been reduced to working at jobs that they are very overqualified for, for low pay, if of course they can get a job at all.
Please note that the vast majority of the migrant workers are in the U.K., and working legally, so no easy remedy is apparent, unless the cost of, and standard of living in the poorer E,U, countries rises to match our own, or more likely ours drops to theirs.
In case you’re wondering I am, and have always been pro European Community.
. Him; This is a virgin trains ticket, and this is a country and western service, so it’s not valid. I need to sell you a new one.