London Banter - View Single Post

Recliner[_3_] · January 10th 17, 03:49 PM posted to uk.transport.london

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:31:45 on Tue, 10 Jan
2017, d remarked:

If that was the only place immigrants were taking jobs then that would be a
valid question, but as you know - it isn't.

It's the jobs which tipped the Brexit balance among voters.

Yes, but I doubt it was particularly vegetable picking jobs.

I'm currently sitting in an office 60% immigrants, none of them doing
a job that couldn't have been done by a native. And in fact 1 position
was illegally filled since it wasn't advertised in the UK before a
foreign director found someone in his own country to fill it for a
pittance salary.

That's extraordinary. Either a very small office and that's six out of

Not in London it isn't. Most IT depts I've worked in in the last 10 years
have been 30-60% foreign nationals and the proportion has slowly been rising
over the years.

ten by some fluke, or as you hint a foreign-owned firm preferring its
nationals. And that could of course bring with them skills that a native
*didn't* have.

The majority of the directors are foreign and seem to prefer to hire
immigrants. I'm guessing because they're cheaper.

The last place I worked was a french company and a lot of jobs didn't get
created in the UK, they got "transfered" from france and so did the incumbent
who had been doing it for a couple of days after being hired in france. But
it still looks like a new UK job. Win!

Naturally politicians and Guardian readers are either too pig ignorant or out
of touch to realise this sort of thing is going on all over the place.

Of course it happens a bit, but with only 12% of employees foreign
nationals, there are a lot of regional variations. To be fair the number
in London is higher than average - but most are in minimum wage jobs.
Just 3.2% in IT or telecoms jobs.

Source: Labour Force Survey 2015, Q1-Q4.

Of course, our labour pool will be flooded by British expats sent
packing after freedom of movement in Europe ends.

I very much doubt that any established expats will be sent packing in
either direction. People already resident will almost certainly be
permitted to stay on.

Also, while most EU expats in the UK are workers, many UK expats in the EU
are retirees. While I'm sure they'll be permitted to remain, their access
to local health services may be more limited than today, which may mean
that some choose to return.