Poles unwilling to go home in current recession

by johnofgwent

A litttle more ammunition for those of us who unlike Labour, Tory and Lib Dems not only know there's an election in a little over three weeks, but relish the contest and can't wait for the result.

Over on this bbc web page you will find damning evidence of what we all know is the truth but the three tri-axis parties wish to bury their heads in the sand over.

The main political parties would have us believe that the Poles who eagerly flocked to this country five years ago when it threw open its doors to anyone from the EU who fancied a job at "five times the salary they would get at home" all went home when the British Pound no longer bought the required number of Euro's at the other end of a Western Union Money Transfer Office.

The truth is rather different.

Every month a different Mayor of a different town in Poland comes to London to hold a presentation for an audience of 40 to 50 Poles in a hotel conference room . The meeting, hosted by an association called "Poland Street" is an opportunity for the audience to learn of employment and business opportunities that await them id they return home. But the audience are not exactly desperate to go.

"I've been here three years and I really enjoy London," says Marcel Gierlach, who works as an aviation engineer. "I'm just thinking of the future - to go back because of family." His friend Magda Milosz says: "I want to go back one day. But I have a job so there's no rush."

Well, I think GA and I can both see where such people are coming from. I used to have just such a high-roller lifestyle freelancing in the aviation and defence industry and he had his in the commercial and industrial sector until both our companies were derailed courtesy of government policy to replace us with cheap imports with illegally issued fast tracked visas and with exports of the contracts to countries where workers are paid a bag of lentils a day if they are lucky.

So yes I can well understand the motives of those professionals with qualifications who come here to take the work that could be done by a Briton with the same qualifications. But it goes much. much deeper than that.

At the Goodwin Trust community group in Hull, is 60-year-old Tadeusz Pawlik, who last year he lost his job at a meat processing factory in Wales. He spent all winter looking for work, drawing job seekers' allowance and borrowing money. Now he's got seasonal work weighing tomatoes at a nursery. "I am worried I'll be unemployed again," he says, "but things are even worse in Poland. I don't want to go back."

Radek Sobota went back to Poland, in December, to be with his wife and daughter but is now back in Hull with them. "I took unpaid leave from my job in Hull and spent two-and-a-half months looking for work in Poland. I went to a restaurant I'd once worked at, but they wouldn't take me back on. Then I tried others, but no-one was hiring," he says. "So I came back to my old job in Hull as a butcher in a meat factory.

The truth is that Unemployment in Poland is now running at 11.1% compared to the 6.7% in the UK. And those who came here five years ago and who have worked for two of those five years in National Minimum Wage jobs are now entitled to claim benefits - which they are doing.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for last year show a 40% rise in income-related benefit claims, compared with the year before, from citizens of the eight eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004 - known as the A8 countries.

And if you want any more evidence of the desite of British People to want British Jobs For British Workers, go stand in the street outside the jobcentre in Hull and talk to the people leaving it like this BBC reporter did:-

Outside the Britannia job centre in Hull, there's a steady stream of people. There are 28 people on job seekers' allowance per job vacancy in Hull. "It gets people down, these migrants taking all our jobs. Added to the recession, it is one problem on top of another," says a man leaving the job centre. He adds: "I want to work. I don't want to be on the social for the rest of my life." Another man says there's a perception among employers that migrants work harder. He feels he was overlooked for positions in the past because he's local.

Dermot Finch, director of the centre, says the recession is altering the picture. Newly unemployed people are more likely to be in direct competition for jobs than was the case. "What you're seeing is increased competition for the same jobs between Polish and British people," he says.

"It's hard to tell whether Poles are being more successful than indigenous people who have recently lost their job. "But what is clear is that not every Pole is going home. The exodus story has been overplayed. More are hanging around than we think and they're trying their hardest to pick up work."

It appears the Government is "doing what it can" to solve this problem of Poish Workers taking British Jobs. It has "extended" the "Workers Registration Scheme" which makes it harder for passport holders from the 8 countries that joined the EU in 2004 to claim benefits here. But that isn't stopping them doing so as the quotes above show.

So the british Government is paying out British Taxpayers money to make it possible for Poles who lose their jobs in Britain to browse for jobs in Poland, in Polish, on terminals at Job Centre Plus branches - and a spokesman for the DWP said it's preparing a "European Job Day" in Birmingham for later in the year "to promote job mobility" where I"colleagues from Poland are expected to be heavily involved".

Of course, now that successive governments have given away our right to run this country our way, by signing the Mastriccht and Lisbon Treaties, there is little else the clown in charge can do now except spend our tax money running job seminars in Britain hoping to persuade people who hold foreign passports to go home.

Not for him the obvious solution of not letting the foreigners have free rein in the first place.

Not for him a closed border and work visa scheme driven by genuine -need for skills as opposed to one driven by invented shortages listed after the "meeting of minds - (and who else wonders if there was an opening of wallets too) - between Blair and foreign multi-millionaire businessmen.

And Not for him the solution currently being used by Sarkosy across the Channel. There, the EU Competition Regulations are getting a Gallic Shrug and a Two Fingered Salute. Sarkosy is bribing his country's car industry with government money conditional upon the industry's agreement to close or mothball plants outside France and bring the work home for French voters.

It seems the BBC will be broadcasting more on this issue at 5pm tonight on Radio 4's "PM" programme. I wait with bated breath.