BUT EMPLOYERS SAY FOREIGN WORKERS HAVE MORE SKILLS – AND A BETTER WORK ETHIC
A row has erupted between the work and pensions secretary and Britain’s top employers over whether businesses have a responsibility to offer their jobs to young British workers – rather than relying on foreign workers.
Ian Duncan Smith urged UK businesses to “give a chance” to unemployed young Britons, and said a “realistic promise” of work formed part of the government’s “contract” with the British people:
“If we do not get this right then we risk leaving more British citizens out of work, and the most vulnerable group who will be the most affected are young people.
“But government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market, we need businesses to give them a chance, and not just fall back on labour from abroad.”
Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green, said Duncan Smith was “absolutely right” to urge businesses to hire more home-grown talent:
“Employers have a responsibility to give young British workers a chance and the government must get a grip of immigration if they are to avoid abandoning a whole generation of young Britons on the dole.”
But businesses rejected Duncan Smith’s call, stressing that firms needed the “best people” and migrants often had a better work ethic and skills. They also said that favouring British workers over other nationalities was likely to be illegal under EU law.
Duncan Smith said more than half the jobs created between 1997 and 2010 went to foreign nationals, and over the last 12 months foreigners were still filling more than half of new posts. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds fell by 79,000 to 895,000 in the three months to this April but youth unemployment rates still stand at above 19%.
But Andrew Cave, from the Federation of Small Businesses, said that for decades governments had removed links between the education system and business – and that as a result British applicants now lacked the skills and training considered desirable by employers:
“I do not think it is the role of employers to discriminate on that basis [of nationality] – it is the role of employers to take on the best person for the job.”
David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said employers hired eastern Europeans because often they were better workers:
“[Firms] expect young people to come forward to them who are able to read, write and communicate, and have a good work ethic, and too often that’s not the case [with British applicants]. There is a stream of highly able eastern European migrants who are … skilled, speak good English and, more importantly, want to work.”
And Neil Carberry, the CBI director for employment policy, said although businesses wanted to give British people a chance, firms had to be allowed to hire the best recruits:
“Employers should choose the best person. The challenge is to ensure that more young Britons are in a position to be the best candidate.”
Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne told the BBC his party would increase taxes on bank bonuses to help pay for new work opportunities for 60,000 young people:
“There are simply not enough jobs because the government is cutting back too far and too fast. The great tragedy of all of this is that young people lose the habits of work and we as taxpayers have to pick up the bill.”
*Whose side are you on?
Should businesses be forced to consider home-grown graduates over foreign workers? Or do employers have the right to give jobs to the best candidate, wherever they’re from? What do you make of the argument that immigrants have a better work ethic than young British workers?
Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of economics will know that tariffs, or restricting competition is to the detriment of all parties in the long term. The jobs should go to the best qualifying candidates – wherever they are from.
A discussion I had that relates to the negative impact of the ‘British graduate sense of entitlement’…
I was having an interesting discussion with a friend of mine who got a first. She is deeply unhappy in a low-paying job (in fashion, an industry many dream of going into) because it’s not stimulating. The words ‘I got a first, I’m actually intelligent’ were used. I think it’s this attitude that is what is so wrong with the way graduates are recruited. Academic excellence does not necessarily equate to ability to do a job. Grad schemes that will only take people with firsts and 2:1s are missing out on a great crop of graduates that are not academically excellent but are vocationally intelligent, something of far more worth.
Just my two cents and slightly off-topic, but I thought it was a valid observation.
I find Ian Duncan Smith’s comments absoloutely laughable. I think that most overseas workers are multi-lingual, have far superior numeracy and are far more motivated. The UK has always relied on migrant workers and if anything I believe we should open up more opportunity for overseas students to study and work in the UK… It will help to drag the standard of Uk teaching up to where it should be. Unfortunately, we have to accept that over 50% of graduates in this country shouldnt have bothered going to University with their academic records; yet once they have a piece of paper they sense an entitlement to the job of their choice. Our country is full of arrogant and under skilled workers who rightly find themselves unemployed. Most of what i have read on this blog is sensationalist and totally flawed. Good luck with it though.
I think with this issue there are valid arguments on both sides. A lot of young people are leaving school barely able to read and write and with a poor work ethic. I think the discipline situation in schools is a big problem. If you can misbehave in school with little punishment then its going to come as a shock when you enter the working world and the same behaviour is not tolerated. I can see why businesses would not want to hire people like this.
On the other hand I think what’s behind this argument is that a lot of employers don’t want to have to train their staff. Its easier for them to take on someone who has already been trained by employers from their country of origin. It annoys me when employers bleat on about our generation being lazy and having a sense of entitlement when many of them are too lazy to invest in training and feel entitled to already trained employees in their entry level jobs.
I think there are plenty of young British people with good work ethics who are not being given a chance.
Laughable stance of the government, as always. Firstly, neither are all UK jobs filled by young migrants nor are all UK youth unemployed. This is a simple case of demand vs supply, with a taste of opportunity vs quality and talent.
As for the government, they are a bunch of illogical idiots. The only thing they know is to be populist by taxing bank bonuses as a solution to all their problems. It is bankers with all theri cash that are stimulating the economy whereas the tax is footing the bill of undeserving people enjoying state benefits (Not all, some do genuinely require state aid). This is all a game of votes, they declare what people want to hear and do nothing.
I totally disagree with most of the comments above. What has happened over the last ten or twenty years is that various free trade agreements, the EU included, have allowed movement of labour over vast distances thereby increasing competition and driving down wages. Given the attitude of businesses, and for that read ‘mega-corporations’, we might as well not have a country at all, tear down the Union Jack, sack the queen, disband the army, etc etc. What we need to do is retrain our own people and strengthen immigration controls, otherwise we are going to see the rebirth of fascism in our own country never mind anywhere else. In fact its already happening, there is massive and growing resentment against immigrants in the UK and part of that is starting to turn racist and very ugly. If we’re just going to dump our own people on the scrapheap, then the future will be very dark. Also, you guys think its just a case of selection of those people with the best skills wherever they are from. Actually its not, what its about is the domination of the entire planet by megacorporations and the adoption of the idea that labour is merely a commodity to be traded rather than the absolutely more human realisation that labour is actually composed of real people with real feelings and ambitions and hopes. I absolutely detest turbo-capitalists and some of you seem to be moving in that direction. If Duncan-Smith is right in saying that over half of new jobs were awarded to immigrants, I find that absolutely abhorrent and its inviting real trouble in my opinion.