Can British unemployed do work of immigrants? (24Feb10)

A Newsnight investigation looks into can British unemployed do the work that immigrants are brought in to do. Yes they can, but the immigrants are cheaper, so the British are left on the scrap heap.

Recorded from Newsnight, 24 February 2010.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• can
• british
• people
• do
• the
• work
• immigrants
• newsnight
• investigation
• yes
• they
• wages
• minimum
• wage
• costs
• uk
• scrap
• heap
• open
• borders

[anon2999]

and how much longer had the "migrants" been doing that picking job? Sort of an important bit to leave out.

[loveEUROPEhateEU]

If the English we're there for as long as the immigrants then they'll do just aswell obv.

[anon2999]

@dominickearney jobs like that and the asparagus picking are done much faster by people who have the rhythm down. Perhaps you've never worked or acquired a skill because anyone who has knows that with practice/repetition you become faster and make fewer mistakes.

This is true of everything in life.

[willwak]

@dominickearney

I've worked with foreign workers. Doing the back breaking work that ''no Brits will do'' I've done it pal. I KNOW what I'm talking about and I can assure you nobody complained more about the work and conditions than the foreigners. They thought we were mad for working as hard as we did. They didn't believe I wasn't getting paid more until I showed my pay packet..

I don't need to ''watch the video'' I've bent my back in fields for ten hours a day. You should try it.

[dominickearney]

@anon2999 Yeah, cos it's really hard to pick things up and put them in a basket. Takes years of training.

[dominickearney]

@willwak Did you actually watch the video? The British workers didn't work half as hard as the immigrants so their wages had to be topped up to minimum wage. That's where the extra cost came in.

[willwak]

If English workers could earn four or five times their own minimum wage in another country, they would move there and do it. I worked in Germany during their big boom. I got more that I ever could in the UK. There were lots of British workers there and they were thought to be good tradesmen. The myth of the lazy Brit is just that. More like Shylock employers tight as a duck's arse with deep pockets and short arms.

Wages just enough to pay the bills and have one night out....SLAVE WAGES.

[willwak]

The question is not whether British workers can do the work of immigrants. The real question is why British employers pay such a pittance that only immigrants (to whom British minimum wages are several times their native wages) can financially progress.

What man will work just to live? A slave. The CBI are traitors and when the civil war breaks out, they will run away to their second homes abroad. They are creating a third-world Britain where we will become the aborigines or native Indians.

[danielhewson]

@suroj I'm not saying that, all I'm saying is that the BBC suggested only white English people couldn't/didn't want to work they wouldn't have suggested scots or welsh couldn't/didn't want to work, they don't look at how the benefits system traps people in unemployment by making you no better off in work and frequently worse off.

[suroj]

@loveEUROPEhateEU I'm sure that would be the case, but they are not there are they? Think about it, some Polish guy gets some money together and travels all the way to the UK to get a packing or picking job. The same job which could have already been taken by an unemployed English citizen. If the British Unemployed actually filled these jobs then instead of living of the state, the Polish guy would probably have to go elsewhere.

[suroj]

@danielhewson Asian people? You mean Muslim people right? Hindus and Sikhs work.

[PHONEYPOLITICS]

@danielhewson no they werent the skinny potatoe factory guy was not white - ?