Global Labour Market, Primordial Loyalties, Libertarianism, and Basket Case Britain
Latest Report
Sadly, we need to face up to the fact that David Frost is right. (For once!)
The libertarian 'culture' - which started back in the sixties - has resulted in, first, a generation of parents who were told children should do as they please, and have their every whim instantly satisified - much to the delight of corporate advertisers! - and a resultant generation of children who are very often unemployable.
[This does not overlook the fact that, thanks to globalization, there are fewer - and usually poorer - jobs available.]
The parental, cultural, and educational failure is largely complete, and will cause growing chaos and disruption when the current 'cut the deficit' policies finally kick in.
Hidden behind this problem is both the continued growth of the population in the UK, which will not be able to feed itself - thanks to the CAP - and the upcoming resource depletion - 'peak everything' - and concomittant energy shortages, both of which will reveal the bankruptcy of economic 'policy' since coporate-finance-capital took control in the 1980s.
If you've seen the film "The Children of Men" you will know what the future has in store.
This catastrophic complex of problems will not be turned round by any of the three existing political parties, all currently in hoc to the utopian theory which believes that the invisible hand will sort it. It won't!
Trapped in Neoliberalism's Addiction to Growth
New green alliance in savage attack on George Osborne
"Following the chancellor's autumn statement, we can say that the coalition is on a path to becoming the most environmentally destructive government to hold power in this country since the modern environmental movement was born," states one letter, signed by the green campaigners George Monbiot, Tony Juniper, Jonathon Porritt, Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party ...
A second letter, from the heads of the RSPB, Greenpeace and others, says:
"The stunning disregard shown for the value of the natural environment not only flies in the face of popular opinion but goes against everything the government said in June, when it launched two major pieces of environmental policy – the natural environment white paper and the England biodiversity strategy." ...
Gdn 03 Dec 2011Wanted: more immigrants to boost British economy
George Osborne's economic strategy rests on continued high levels of immigration to Britain ...
If ministers were to succeed in reducing immigration down to their target, the UK's growth would be damaged, the OBR's economists believe – acknowledging the role that immigration plays in Britain's economic health ...
The OBR said: "Our assumption for population growth is based on average net inward migration of 140,000 per annum over the forecast period [2011-16]."
Net migration to the UK in 2010 was 252,000, according to the Office for National Statistics, the highest level on record ...
The OBR has also pointed out that falls in immigration would have economic implications.
Reductions in net immigration would have a negative impact on UK growth ...
Ind 03 Dec 2011 Coalition Log George Osborne Is the Coalition eco-friendly
Neoliberalism's Addiction to Growth Whither Britain? LogUK population 'to increase to 70 million by 2027'
UK population sees biggest increase in half a century
UN 'concerned' by world population growth trends
Green Politics
Population
Population Matters
Workers should not fear for jobs under employment law overhaul, says Vince Cable
Mr Cable is due to announce what is being billed as the biggest reform of employment law for decades – although senior Conservatives have privately blamed Liberal Democrat Coalition partners of hampering an even greater overhaul.
Ministers say cutting the cost and bureaucracy of laying off workers will help businesses remain profitable throughout the economic downturn ...
Tel 23 Nov 2011Coalition to relax employment laws
Ministers also want to make it easier for companies to lay off large numbers of staff more quickly.
Under current laws on collective redundancy, companies planning to lay off large numbers of staff have to hold a consultation lasting at least 90 days.
That could fall to 30 days under the proposals.
Business groups have told ministers that the requirement to go on paying workers for so long after deciding to sack them places an undue burden on companies trying to cut costs urgently ...
Tel 23 Nov 2011 A 'modern and compassionate party' Coalition Log Pawns and PlayersCameron's war on employment rights
Precarity
Why revisit the working time directive?
Every crisis also provides an opportunity.
In exchange for agreeing to the revision of the Lisbon treaty, it looks like the British coalition government has won the right to revisit the EU working time directive ...
The working time directive is a European Union directive that provides the right for workers in EU member states to have a minimum number of holidays each year, paid breaks and rest of at least 11 in any 24 hours, as well as placing an upper limit (subject to some exemptions, called "opt outs") on the number of hours a worker may work per week.
This is currently 48 hours per week ...
Like all parts of the social chapter, it was opposed by Margaret Thatcher and the Tories because of their belief that anything that stopped the untrammelled operation of the free market was an affront ... to the right of employers to act as they saw fit ...
Gdn 21 Nov 2011Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood
... the Office of National Statistics will shortly be asked to produce measures to implement David Cameron's long-stated ambition of gauging "general wellbeing" ... the government's aim is for respondents to be regularly polled on their subjective wellbeing, which includes a gauge of happiness, and also a more objective sense of how well they are achieving their "life goals".
The new data will be placed alongside existing measures to create a bundle of indications about our quality of life ...
Gdn 15 Nov 2010
Coalition Log Pawns and Players
Oliver James Towards a new measure of well-beingComment is free readers on … long working hours
Government set to measure UK happiness
Work-Life Balance
Precarity
Extra 150,000 foreign workers in Britain as unemployment rises
It's very convenient to blame the eurozone, but there's a larger canvass to this report. Like Premier League football clubs which prefer to buy the 'ready made product' from abroad, many firms prefer the same route to the more costly route of actually training the 'home grown' variety.
... even as overall unemployment rose, foreign workers continued to prosper.
Yes, I know there's a big problem with the demand for 24/7 entertainment, carefully cultivated by - among others - the Murdoch media, and there's also a big problem with the fact that schools can no longer inculcate the vanished 'sacrifice-today-for-a-better-tomorrow' culture which used to exist fifty/sixty years ago.
However, fifty/sixty years ago precarity was unheard of, and there really was full employment.
Which leads on to the bigger problem, which government ministers understand perfectly well, but would rather not discuss with the hoi polloi.
It's very simple: the global economy needs a globally mobile labour force, and a reserve army.
It keeps wage rates in check.
The number of non-UK nationals in British employment was 2.56 million, up 147,000 from the same period year earlier ...
Chris Grayling, the employment minister, said ministers are working to get more British workers into jobs.
However, he suggested that some employers would rather hire experienced foreigners than take on British school-leavers.
“In many cases there is reluctance on the part of employers to take in people straight from school, college or university with no experience,” he said ...
Tel 16 Nov 2011 Coalition Log Full Employment? Reserve Army
Dispensing with the Third Face of Power The myth of full employment
Eurozone debt crisis: can the European ideal survive?
The [UK] Government’s policy, which is to encourage fiscal union in Europe while simultaneously attempting to ensure we get something in return, is starting to look increasingly untenable.
Switzerland and Norway are tolerated, like parasites on the pig’s belly, as EU free-riders because they are small and of little consequence.
Britain would be a different matter entirely and would be repeatedly disadvantaged by a fiscally unified eurozone.
Saving the world from immediate disaster has to be the priority for now, but there will come a time in this unfolding crisis when more radical thinking is called for.
The single currency cannot survive on the present policy mix. Britain must prepare to switch tack.
Tel 25 Oct 2011Give firms freedom to sack unproductive workers
More precarity?
Britain’s “terrible” employment laws are undermining economic growth and should be overhauled, according to the confidential report obtained by The Daily Telegraph ...
The radical recommendation to scrap the concept of unfair dismissal is made by Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist, in a report commissioned by David Cameron ...
Mr Beecroft warns that simply scrapping the law would be “politically unacceptable”.
He therefore recommends a replacement regulation, called Compensated No Fault Dismissal, which would allow employers to sack unproductive staff with basic redundancy pay and notice.
Mr Beecroft concedes that a “downside” under his new scheme is that employers could fire staff because they “did not like them”.
“While this is sad I believe it is a price worth paying for all the benefits that would result from the change”, he says ...
Tel 25 Oct 2011Tory revolt and the precariat
Behind all the fervour for freeing the United Kingdom from servitude in the EU, the lies and rage about the Brussels bureaucracy, and the nationalist rhetoric about "repatriating powers" lurks an insistent desire to abolish all or much of the social and employment legislation that Europe has given to families and workers in this country.
European Community law has transformed the protection of economic and social rights in the UK, especially in employment.
The first and greatest impact of EU law was in the areas of sex discrimination and equal pay, but it has subsequently pervaded nearly every aspect of employment, and has been particularly crucial in terms of employment rights.
(The EU is the only region in the world in which workers' rights are legally embedded.)
The UK is also obliged by law to comply with a wide range of EU regulations and directives, promoting inter alia socio-economic rights on equality, health, maternity pay and safety at work.
What the Tories want is to reduce such rights to make the labour market "flexible", or in other words, to give employers even more power over their workers ...
openDemocracy 25 Oct 2011
Coalition Log EU Log 'Reserve Army' Third Meltdown Log
Precarity
Tories face union anger over tribunals change
Mr Osborne told the Sun:
"We talk a lot about trade union rights - but what about the right of the unemployed person to be given a shot at a job and a career?
"What about the rights of people currently sitting at home with nothing to do, desperate to get work, but the business can't afford to employ them because they fear they are going to be taken to the tribunal?"
A total of 236,000 employment tribunal claims were made last year, with an average award of £8,900 for successful claimants, and the average cost of defending a claim at £4,000, according to Treasury officials.
It is claimed the change in law will benefit business by around £6 million a year in reduced legal fees and payouts, while employees are expected to lose around £1 million in unfair dismissal awards ...
Ind 01 Oct 2011 Coalition Log Globalization Log Third Meltdown LogOsborne plays down tax cuts but wants to make sacking staff easier
Precarity
North Lincolnshire oil refineries workers protest
The union claims construction companies are planning to dismiss staff and re-employ them on new contracts with wages reduced by up to 30% ...
BBC NEWS 26 Sept 2011 Falling Standards of Living'Sign new contracts or leave'
Net immigration up by more than 20%
The number of people coming to the UK for more than a year, less the number leaving, hit 239,000, the second highest annual figure on record and the fourth highest figure for any 12-month period since records began ...
Ind 25 Aug 2011Businesswoman attacks workshy
Overseas workers preferred to unskilled school leavers in job market
This report touches on one of the deepest problems facing education for life with neoliberal free markets: the 'product' is expected to be both docile consumer and skilled worker.
School leavers are being pushed to the back of the jobs queue as Britain's employers increasingly turn to migrant labour to fill vacancies ...
The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development ... said companies wanted action from the government to improve the work prospects of UK school leavers.
When asked, respondents identified literacy (53%) and numeracy (42%), as well as good customer service skills (40%) and good communication skills (40%) ...
Gerwyn Davies, public policy adviser, CIPD, said ...
" ... The government therefore needs to redouble efforts to ensure the education and skills system is fit for purpose to ensure young people can find a foothold in an increasingly competitive jobs market." ...
Gdn 23 Aug 2011 Education Log Youth Unemployment
A 'tide of vulgarity' 'Pawns or Players'?
Home secretary urged to review far-right threat
Unemployment - plus 'no such thing as society' - offers fertile soil to the extreme right, as the rise of Hitler - after the 1929 Wall Street crash - confirms.
Theresa May, the home secretary, is under pressure to review Britain's counter-terrorism strategy amid fears that Anders Behring Breivik may have had contact with far-right extremists in Britain.
As David Cameron said he was taking "extremely seriously" Breivik's claims of links to the far right in Britain, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, called on the government to examine the anti-terror Prevent strategy.
Cooper is understood to have written to the home secretary asking her to reassess the strategy, which is designed to tackle the causes of terrorism, in light of the attacks in Norway by Breivik.
A review of the Prevent strategy, published last month, ruled out far-right terror attacks on the scale planned by al-Qaida and its sympathisers ...
Gdn 25 July 2011 War on Terror Log
'Reserve Army' The Christin RightMohammad Usman Rana
Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe
"A return to primordial loyalties"
The attacks in Oslo on Friday have riveted new attention on right-wing extremists not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence.
The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics ...
NYT 23 July 2011 Pawns or Players 'War on Terror & the Christian Right
IDS & The Third Face of Power 'Primordial Loyalties'Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
Migrants 'take the jobs from young Britons'
Mr Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, will say that tighter immigration controls are vital if Britain is to avoid “losing another generation to dependency and hopelessness” ...
“I think there’s been a red herring in this debate around skills. A good proportion of foreign nationals in jobs in the UK are in semi or low-skilled occupations.
“And we know that a significant proportion of those coming into the UK purporting to be high-skilled workers have actually been doing low-skilled jobs once in the UK.”
He says Britain needs an immigration system that gives the unemployed “a level playing field”. “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,” he will say.
“Controlling immigration is critical or we will risk losing another generation to dependency and hopelessness.”
The warning from Mr Duncan Smith is timely. Recent polling by No?10 indicates that immigration, welfare benefits and crime are key concerns for voters.
Frank Field, the Labour MP and a government adviser on poverty, recently uncovered figures indicating that, in the first year of the Coalition, 87 per cent of the 400,000 newly created jobs went to immigrants.
Tel 30 June 2011
British youth can't read or write
The argument takes on a bankrupt circularity: we need more migrants because they are better workers; we need to block all immigration so that our own young people get jobs; but our own young people don't ant menial jobs.
The Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, David Frost, said business leaders knew there was a problem with youth unemployment but they could not afford to ignore cheaper skilled foreign workers.
The argument then goes off on the need for high-skill, high-tech, Britain, but we don't an education system fit for that purpose.
The fact that the libertarian "fuck you buddy" 'culture' - heavily reinforced by corporate advertising and a diet of TV competition shows - will never produce a German-style economy, seems not have dawned on most politicians of whatever stripe.
Mr Frost said employers needed the "best people" and identified what he said were the problems with too many of Britain's youth ...
He said businesses expected "young people to come forward to them who are able to read, write, communicate and have a strong work ethic and too often that's not the case".
He added: "There's a stream of highly able eastern European migrants who are able to take those jobs and that's why they're taking them on.
"They are skilled, they speak good English and, more importantly, they want to work." ...
Tel 01 July 2011The more people come to the UK, the better it is for us all
UK population growing at its fastest rate for a half a century
'Give Brits Jobs, Not Migrants'
How to make short work of unemployment
Lump of labour fallacy
The migrants who care
Nearly one in five care workers employed in the UK residential and home care sectors are migrants coming from either the EU ... or third countries ...
Nearly half of them have come to the UK since the beginning of the 2000s, accounting for about 40% of the expansion of the workforce ...
These figures suggest that reliance on the migrant workforce has become a structural feature of the long-term care sector ...
... the vast majority of organisations employing migrant workers agree that migrants have a good work ethic, are respectful towards older clients and are willing to learn new skills.
There is a clear need to balance the rights and entitlements of two vulnerable groups ...
In this respect, an immigration policy which selects workers on the basis of formal qualifications and measurable skills does not match the needs of the care sector, where 'soft skills' - such as commitment, kindness, compassion or sympathy - are equally, or even more, important for the well-being of older care recipients ...
If the provision of long-term care continues to depend upon large numbers of migrant workers, it should be among the priorities of policy-making ... to tackle the significant unresolved issues related to their employment.
The role of migrant carers has to be planned and not an unintentional consequence of the low prioritisation of the sector.
openDemocracy 07 Dec 2010 Care of the ElderlyAdult social care workforce strategy
Immigration cap will devastate UK companies
Today's research suggests that fears of a dramatic decline in the skills of British graduates and school-leavers are driving employers to look abroad.
Of those questioned, 42% felt the literacy skills of British graduates had fallen over the past five years, compared with just 6% who said they had improved.
For numeracy the corresponding figures were 35% and 5%, and for communication and interpersonal skills 34% and 19%.
There was a similar pattern when it came to British school-leavers.
Many firms are also looking to recruit from abroad, with one in six saying they will bring in migrant workers in the third quarter of this year.
Gerwyn Davies, public policy adviser at CIPD and author of the report, said the government faced a "complex juggling act".
"The proposed introduction of a migration cap comes at a time when many employers are still struggling to fill skilled vacancies despite the high unemployment rate," he added.
"The training of local or British workers to fill skilled jobs currently occupied by migrant workers will not happen overnight." ...
"Companies want to hire local people, but they often have trouble finding local residents with the basic skills, drive and attitude needed to help the business succeed," said Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce.
He added that the "unintended consequences" of the cap could be widespread ...
Observer 22 Aug 2010 Rebalancing Britain's Economy Tory Education 'Reform'Cable supported in call for more flexible immigration curbs
The cap on immigration cannot hold
Nine giant new wind farms in the seas around Britain will be announced today, but few of the 6,000 turbines needed are likely to be built here.Wind farms could power half of Britain’s homes, but jobs could go overseas
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, will say that the world’s biggest expansion of offshore wind power, costing £75 billion, will create 70,000 jobs in Britain by 2020.
However, the Government has failed to persuade any of the major wind turbine manufacturers to open a factory in Britain. The companies granted licences today to build the farms will not be obliged to source any parts from domestic manufacturers and most are expected to buy turbines made in Denmark or Germany.
A taskforce of officials from Downing Street, the Treasury and the business and energy departments has held talks with suppliers in recent months including Siemens, Vestas, Mitsubishi and General Electric, but none is yet willing to commit to manufacturing in Britain ...
The British Wind Energy Association said yesterday that the cost of building wind turbines had doubled in recent years, partly because of the fall in the value of sterling and a growing reliance on imports.
Each megawatt of wind capacity announced today will cost up to £3.1 million, compared with £1.5 million for the first offshore wind farms approved a decade ago.
John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The Government’s role is clear: train and equip Britain’s workforce to ensure that the thousands of jobs that will be created are filled by British workers, and provide the economic certainty investors need to complete these projects on time and on budget.”
Times 08 Jan 2010Generating power and jobs?
Crown Estates names winners of wind farms bid
Arrival of 30,000 migrant IT workers 'deprives Britons of jobs’
Tens of thousands of foreign IT workers are being sent to work for their companies’ subsidiaries in Britain, sparking fears that British workers are being denied job opportunities.
Almost 30,000 non-EU technology workers entered the country under so-called intra-company transfers last year, with the overwhelming majority coming from India.
Most of those arriving came for low and mid-level IT jobs where there are not significant skills shortages among British-born workers, fuelling suspicion that British workers are losing out to foreign workers who are being paid lower wages.Ann Swain, the chief executive of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies, which represents recruitment companies, said that such transfers were designed to allow specialists within a particular company to fill senior positions abroad. But he added that they were being abused to fill lower level roles in which the skills used are largely standardised ...
Times 05 Jan 2010
Protectionism: is it so bad?
... there is evidence to prove that free trade has not served well the richest economy in the world.
The US showed remarkable growth together with a rise in real wages for a majority of its population up until the late 1960s.
This was a period when the US manufacturing industries were in good health and were still protected from foreign competition by tariffs (taxes on foreign imports). Since 1973, however, when it turned to quasi free trade, the country has seen declining levels of real wage for around 80 percent of its workforceas high wage manufacturing sector jobs have been replaced by low wage service sector jobs.
The benefits of free trade have only accrued to the owners and CEOs of large multinational corporations which have been able to outsource production to low wage countries. Of course there has been overall GDP growth but that says nothing about how the benefits of this growth were distributed. Besides, the current financial crisis bares for all to see how consumer demand during the recent years was built upon the foundations of unsustainable debt.
Many free trade economists argue that the consumers benefit the most from free trade since it lowers the costs of goods and services. These economists forget that the same consumers are also workers and wage earners. If they lose jobs due to decline in manufacturing and increased outsourcing or are forced into low wage sectors of the economy due to free trade, their purchasing power is reduced. For one who suffers wage loss in tandem with falling prices there are hardly any benefits from free trade to brag about ...
openDemocracy 13 April 2009This recession will hasten the shift to a new economic world order
Goldman Sachs predicts Indian incomes to become world-class by 2030
Free trade – or fair trade?
Hundreds march at new power stations over foreign labour
Yesterday's protests included a march on a job centre in Newark, Nottinghamshire, where unemployed local people say they have lost out to Spanish and Polish workers on 850 jobs. A small number of engineers at the nearby Staythorpe site, where an advanced gas turbine power station is being built, walked out in support in spite of disciplinary warnings. Approximately 300 local demonstrators were joined by 200 outside supporters, including veterans of last week's successful action at Total's Lindsey refinery on the Humber estuary. ...
Saville Wells, 64, said: "We've no objection to foreign lads coming to work here but we should have been given a fair chance. Instead, they brought in their own people as a package.
"It was a done deal. It's threatening the system that's worked well for everybody for the 47 years I've been in the trade. These demonstrations are peaceful. We want to persuade them, to win the argument that way."
Younger protesters said that they were starting to think that the industry had no future, with "package deals" involving complete imported workforces spreading by the week. Adam Hughes, 26, from Wrexham, said: "I did four years' apprenticeship to become a pipeworker but I can see that I may have to change my job. This is happening all over. There's a big power station due down at Pembroke, but they've started building hostel foundations there. Will that be for British workers? I don't think so." ...
Guardian 12 February 2009
Wildcat Strikes
What is the dispute about?
The dispute reflects union alarm that work on key infrastructure projects, such as power stations, has been subcontracted to foreign workers, and that UK workers are being denied the right to carry out the work.
It centres on a contract to extend the diesel refining capacity at a refinery owned by oil giant Total in Lincolnshire.
The contract to complete the work was awarded to the California-based engineering group Jacobs in June 2006 with a completion date of 2009.
They then subcontracted to an Italian firm, IREM, after a tender process in which five UK and two European contractors responded.
It is understood that the terms of the contract specified that IREM would be using its existing permanent Italian and Portuguese workforce for the job.
BBC NEWS 30 January 2009
In the light of the wave of walk-outs and protests sparked off by the employment of migrant labour at
the Lindsey Oil Refinery, Lincolnshire, the following extracts from leftist critiques of the Lisbon Treaty
help us to make sense of what is taking place.
What was predicted - and dismissed as UKIP-style nationalism - has now come about, and confirms the analysis
posted by Sandy Brian Hager.
[SBH]
The reluctance to offer referenda - and thus a full discussion
of the treaty's contents - now emerges as a typical neoliberal ploy to use the EU to promote the
Washington Consensus.
This is not citizenship but Sandy Brian Hager's "precarious and commodified citizenship".
Brown has been a party to these developments, which reveals the bogus - and hypocritical - nature of his
"British jobs for British workers" speeches.
'British jobs for British workers'
What is the dispute about?
Support demo over foreign staff
Foreign worker jobs 'red rag to a bull'
More workers walk out as jobs protest spreads
Refinery strike enters third day
Wildcat strikes over foreign workers spread across Britain
Britons are unemployed because of 'lack of motivation'
Britons are out of work because they lack motivation and "employability", not because of competition with foreign workers, ministers said.
The arrival of a million Eastern Europeans in the past four years has not damaged wages or led to an increase in unemployment among natives, the Department for Work and Pensions insisted.
But some Britons were on the dole because of "issues around basic employability skills, incentives and motivation", its report said.
The attack on the native workforce came as the Government published a separate study in which they admitted that an influx of foreigners is causing social tensions in areas unprepared for large-scale immigration. ...
Telegraph 12 June 2008
British workers lack skills and
drive of east Europe's migrants
British workers lack the skills and motivation to fill the job vacancies that have been taken over the past four years by the largest ever influx of migrants, mainly from eastern Europe, an official study says.
The Department of Work and Pensions report published yesterday says that the generally poor position of low-skilled British workers doesn't reflect a lack of available jobs or formal qualifications "but rather issues around basic employability skills, incentives and motivation". ...
The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, said:"With powerful controls in place, migration can make Britain richer and that's what we're blunt about with the House of Lords today. On average migrants are more likely to be in work, earn more and are therefore likely to be paying more tax, and are a lighter burden on public finances than those born in the UK. Our job now is to make sure migration does even more to profit Britain, economically and culturally."Guardian 12 June 2008