Do we really need Polish immigrants to come to the UK to drive tractors and forklift trucks?

tom_p1980

"The arguement is that no British worker is skilled enough to do the job"

The counter-arguement is that many the Govt is encouraging young people to go to Uni and College and stay in further education, how can they get work based training if they are being lured into further education?

Also many training providers charge you for the course, so how can someone who is unemployed fork our Â£200 for a course/training that they may not even pass?

"or willing to do it for the low pay"

Myth! Many unemployed people are willing to work for minimum wage, but are being looked over because companies can pay immigrants below the minimum wage, I know this myself. They try to use that argument all the time but it's without substance. If you have debts, a home, a family etc, you are not gonna take the lowest paid job that doesn't help pay the above mentioned, you find one that pays well, enought to cover you and your family. Not a job that is gonna pay peanuts. I've been to the bottom and worked my way up, I've paid my dues and busted my balls to not go back to cleaning toilets and doing meaningless jobs again and that thought is shared by many people who have paid their dues

"Isn't the lack of skills due to employers penny pinching as training is more expensive than paying minimum wage?"

You got it bang on there, thats what this whole scenario is about, "cheap labour". They try to disguise it by coming out with the arguments you pointed out and the liberals usually say that "it's the lazy, dole scrounging, white mans fault". But at the end of the day it's all about cutting corners and cutting wages.

"They say the British won't work for low pay, but the fact is, it's much cheaper living 20 to a two bedroom flat for a short period, if you are saving all your cash to take back to Eastern Europe, where as a single British person would have to pay council tax and other living expenses over a lifetime."

Again bang on, but not only that, even the thickest POS dole scrounger has some degree of knowlege of Employment Law, something the immigrants don't hence why they are taken advantage of both in wages and working hours/conditions. Why pay some indiginous person with the right qualifications the right amount for the work, who knows Employment Law and their Rights, when you can pay an unqualified Immigrant a pittance, train them as they work, who have no idea of Employment Law or their rights

If they knew of our Employment Laws, they wouldn't be taken advantage of and would demand a decent pay as well as a decent standard of living, and it is this ignorance that the businesses rely on for what is regularly known as Modern-Day Legal Slavery.

jamand

Yes of course we do - how else could British Taxpayers money be sent back to Poland to support their families.

Â£26,000,000 sent to Poland - and we let them get away with it because some Brussels buttwipe eurocrat says we have to.

Try doing this in reverse - we'll all go to Poland and claim benefits - they'll soon tell us to P**s Off

90210 aka Hummer Lover

Good point well made. There must be plenty of British people who can & want to drive lorries and FLT's. They are hardly that skilled that we need to get them all from eastern Europe. If I can drive them then most people can.

Its the companies fault like you say paying crap wages. We need to be paid a wage we can live on without struggling day in day out.

jory

We are all told to admire the work ethic of the poor hard working outsider. Absolute rubbish and greed.

Anyone who encourages longer hours for less money is obviously not working for their living.

It's the money grubbing, selfish, lazy management of this country, (the donkeys leading the lions) who wish a harder life on their own countrymen, for the sake of their own profit.

The Poles will go, so will others. They'll take their money and improve their homeland and then compete with our economy. Then we'll have to get the Chinese in, to work for peanuts.

Eventually, we will lose all the skills a nation needs, we'll all be able to fix computers, but won't have the electricians to power them up.

If cheap labour affected management and political and accountancy level positions, it would be stopped.

And consider this...if you come to Britain from the EU you are eligible for long term medical care, (you get it we fix it) but if we go to the EU our medical care is only for short term.

Another example of the inequity showered upon us by our leaders.

Jester (above) for Prime Minister!

missxx

This subject really gets to me, not enough people complain about the situation cigaro19!! If you have no problem handing our countries money over to the polish, then you pay for them and their families and the rest of us will put our money in for other causes like better hospitals and schooling.

Andy B

Yes we live In a global economy, and yes we are exporting jobs. So how can we be importing workers? Or are we just importing benefit claimants?

Jane D

This is really a touchy subject. Yeah Europe cannot see it the other way round - if hordes of Brits went to Poland and took so many jobs, working for peanuts, its just not right is it. I hope we will step out of the EU soon or at least close our borders to Eastern European countries.

Croxx

No we don't - it's simple..

vvh1te13oy

Here in Canada. Company pays for the training . But the pay is only $20.05 to start .Thats shitty to hear. I thought they fit 25 to 2 BD 1 & you can fit 4 or 5 in the Bathroom

dunwerse

Read this question with interest. I am not good at making a view point about this as I lived in a country in the Mid East where 'foreign workers' were the modern thing to do. People (mainly farmers) would set up a shed or a caravan and bring over Thai or Philipine dairy workers to help out. The workers would be very happy sending back all their earnings to their families. This phenomenon led to a bout of laziness. The lazy farmer would suddenly not have to do all the laborious jobs and work all the rotating shifts etc. (They managed before tho). I don't know where this will lead, especially when there are so many unemployed. I ask myself why can't the job center train these unemployed UK people and set them up. I suppose it has to do with being 'motivated' and pay motivates people... would they be better off? I think the pay is very low and most would be in the same financial situation if they stayed at home on the sofa picking up their income support once a week or whatever.
I am a single parent, 51 this year, with a small child of 10 yrs to support, I work as much as possible in a proper job, rushing about trying to coordinate my hours with her school hours and juggling and paying for baby sitters when its holidays from school etc. I would be better off probably if I was claiming income support. But I am not inclined to do so as I have always worked and am 'motivated' to be independant. The word is motivation.... it seems to be a virus these days that people can't be bothered....kids grow up seeing their parents unemployed and managing... its a plague that has made the word 'motivation' be a word of the past.

robert c

I agree!I have heard it said that the british worker cannot compete with the work rate!!

sohpia07

I am not clear as to what your point is. The fact that someone is prepared to leave their country and live 20 to a flat and work long hours with low pay is admirable to me.

And yes, some British people won't work like that - I certainly couldn't. But training opportunities are widely available in the UK, and it doesn't have to always be at the expense of the employer. It just takes some time and determination to get it.

I'm not saying it's easy - it's a struggle - but you seem to be undermining the work ethic by putting all the responsibility on employers to train their staff!

Its also up to people to seek appropriate training, stick with it, and make use of it. Otherwise its money (and time) down the drain.

Minnie

Sadly yes, because the kids that leave school these days can claim benefits, have a couple of kids and sit in a warm flat all day, all paid for of course. so why would they want to work???

The council flat dwelling dimwits that receive every benefit going seem to think that they are too good for most labouring jobs....lazy bas**rds.

yummymummy

my dad employs them cause there cheap.
but personally i think the govermemnt allow it because they want to annoy us!

Dr Bunsen Honeydew

maybe if the lazy **** chav dole scroungers in this country got off their backsides we wouldn't need foreign workers doing these jobs ...

Beautiful

20 people in one flat?
mmmmmm

Naive

Polish people work hard and have an excellent reputation as 'guest workers' British workers did the same in Germany in the eighties, eh? ('Auf Wiedersehen Pet' etc). ....The real problem is that in the UK unless you are on Â£50K+ then both partners in a family have to work full time just to break even.........a low paid person can never save up, never buy a house. The govt should have put a brake on house buying as a speculative investment -thats what has put house prices up three or five fold meaning that normal uk people can't afford to get on the housing ladder.........in germany you have to pay capital gains tax if you sell yr house within 10 years of buying (I think -might have those exact facts not quite right) but the point is: they dont want people buying so they can sell in 5 years at a big profit.

The Saint

Perhaps if our so-called welfare system stopped paying out to the lazy,indigineous wasters, we wouldn't have any opportunities for foreign workers.

Nod Goblin - I quite agree.All wasters,indigineous or imported,should be slung out. But ultimately, it's your responsibility to better yourself,not the State or companies. Grasp the nettle of responsibility,education and self-support.

thingy

Are there many Poles driving tractors or forklift trucks? Or have you just made this up? Most have low skilled jobs like cleaners, porters, warehouse work. And, despite what you think, there ARE many jobs that 'British' people wont do (at least in sufficient amounts). That's why immigrants find it so easy to get a job.

"it's much cheaper living 20 to a two bedroom flat ".
Do you have proof of this? If you do why not report it as that kind of overcrowding would be illegal. Or is it something else you've made up?

mick t

Until the Polish workers came here it was next to impossible to get a reliable plumber, electrician or general builder to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay in London

Roy S

No - but they work cheap!
RoyS

Superbun

Maybe the British people can learn something from this then, when some are more comfortable to draw benifit

We should be eternally grateful to the Polish immigrants; At last, because of them, the Politicians can now openly talk about immigration without someone jumping up and down shouting," Racist!"

Angel Face!

Unfortunately the eastern Europeans tend to do the jobs us Brits don't want to.

cigaro19

Do we really need people like you whinging and moaning about everything!

waynedl

I've delivered to a few firms where, in the warehouse / order picking n packing / manufacture, there's been mostly foreign workers. This I don't understand, it's a job I did before I became a driver (HGV), and it was a good job for me and most of my mates did it too, I know a few people still do it and a few that are trying to get jobs in warehouses etc. The ones I've mentioned are in areas of high unemployment too, so there's a lot of brits unemployed in the area - they can't all be lazy scroungers. So, what I want to know is, what's the incentive to employ foreigners over brits? This must be what it's come down to, a financial incentive maybe? Can't be work ethic or rates because in those sort of jobs, you do the work till it's done and you mostly have to work at the same / similar rate to the guy next to you or you're out. I have nothing against anybody moving around for work, between areas, counties or countries, to better themselves, earn more money etc (that's what we go to work for) and have no complaints about any of the foreign people I've worked with - don't find they damage more vehicles than brits, don't find them harder working or lazier than brits or any different to be honest (ok, some of the pole / czech birds are much nicer on the eye than brits)

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