Here are two highlights from new research carried out by the No Shit Sherlock! Department:
1. Migrant workers are more likely to be working as temps or in insecure work (for example not having a written contract) than any other workers.
2. Recent migrant workers are more than twice as likely as other workers to be earning less than the appropriate NMW for their age.
We could have guessed the first factoid - from simple observation of The World Around Us or by applying commonsense*. As to the written contract, are employers supposed to spend £100 million on translation services?
The second factoid is meaningless - are 1% of such workers paid less than the NMW? 10%? 50%?
Anyway, I'm not allowed to say "They can always go home, can't they?" without risking arrest or losing my job. So I wont't.
* Economic migrants tend to be people with the lowest earnings potential in their own country, so as long as our worst-paid jobs pay a lot more than in their home country, they are still 'happy' to come here.
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
"Female migrant workers most at risk of not being paid minimum wage"
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6 comments:
I prefer the term compulsorary unemployment productivity rather than minimum wage.
I've said it. So there.
"* Economic migrants tend to be people with the lowest earnings potential in their own country, so as long as our worst-paid jobs pay a lot more than in their home country, they are still 'happy' to come here."
Not sure I agree with this. We might hear about the poor ones but from my experience there are a lot of highly skilled immigrants who can earn a lot more here than at home. A straw poll of our office shows that about 20% of our highly skilled team are immigrants from countries including: greece, New Zealand, Romania, India and USA! Another 20% are 2nd/3rd generation immigrants.
I don't think that we are exceptional in the telecoms/IT sector judging by the CV's I get across my desk.
GS, true.
But I did caveat it with 'tend to be'. Further, high skilled people from middle income countries are hardly likely to be paid less than NMW. I also accept that there are other skilled people from war zones etc who would rather clean offices in the UK than teach or run a library under enemy fire in their home country. But, the point stands that they are economic migrants, and they ought to live and stand by the laws of economics.
"factoid
1. an item of unreliable information that is repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.
2. (N. Amer.) a brief or trivial item of information."
Are you American or just not very literate?
Anon, I was using it to mean a).
I am neither N. Amer. nor illiterate, thank you very much.
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