How not to treat people

[Suff]

Also those workers will need to check if they were docked emergency Tax and NI. If that is the case, then they will need to get it back....

Bemoan zero hour contracts and all the rest all you want. The attempt to "support the common man" is what caused this. A minimum wage with low taxation which sucks in hundreds of thousands of EU workers who can't expect to get anything like it at home.

Little wonder this is going on.

I completely disagree with the job centre. If you are a forklift driver then there is absolutely no sense in going round the shops looking for a job. All it will do is de-skill you and, apparently, that is the justification for sucking in all those immigrants. Namely that we don't have the skills.

However the other spectre might come into force. Contract/Permanent work in another area of the country. I had a quick look and there are two permanent Forklift jobs on jobserve in the last 7 days. Monster, on the other hand, has 77, ranging from just over minimum wage to around £23k. This is the way it has to be. If Eastern Europeans are willing to travel half the way over the EU to work, then people in the UK can't be unwilling to move a few hundred miles to work.

Not a good thought but I don't see this getting better any time soon....

[Workingman]

If Eastern Europeans are willing to travel half the way over the EU to work, then people in the UK can't be unwilling to move a few hundred miles to work.

Whoa, hang on there. Eastern Europeans come here in groups to work for X times the money at home and then live 6+ in a property. One of them will claim housing benefit and they all share the costs. It is cheap living and many of them put up with it as they intend to return home and buy a property outright at the end of it. I know it for a fact as I helped set up a letting agency for a friend and then worked it for a few months till it was up and running.

A Brit, on the other hand, does not have those advantages, especially those who through no fault of their own find themselves on benefits because of lack of local work. They, by the way, are the majority despite what the DM and some TV programmes would like us to believe.

If Dean found a job in Bristol he would have to fund himself, probably in bedsit land. He would almost certainly lose HB back in Wakefield, putting Mrs Dean and any offspring in a difficult position. They can't stay, yet they cannot move, either. The system traps them between Hell and High Water. Upping sticks is fine in theory and maybe works for the young, free and single, but it is not anywhere near a universal solution.

Zero hours contracts - some like them, some don't. My son and daughter both worked them when at Uni. They could plan work around lectures, study and free time. They worked brilliantly for them and helped them to survive financially, and because of that I am against banning them completely. They should not, however, become standard work practice. Businesses and their workforce both need stability, and ZHCs do not offer that.

[medsec222]

Have to agree with you Frank. Regarding zero hours contracts, for most people they are an abomination and demoralising. However, for students and pensioners who want a couple of hours work a week and don't mind when, they can work very well.

[Suff]

I'm aware of all that WM, but this is reality time.

If that is the competition then we have to compete. Nobody said it would be easy. This is our life in the EU until the day we exit it and get a grip on those who live and work in the country.

So we have a clear priority. Either we get out of the EU and control who lives and works in the country (interestingly the Swiss are currently petitioning to have Schengen removed due to employment issues), or we become mobile in our working practises.

There is a huge divide between the North and the South in terms of jobs and wages. If you are mobile then you can leverage that.

Granted it's not easy for a family, but neither is benefits supposed to be either.

It really is as simple as this. Either you have a skill which is in demand in the area or you do one of three things.

1. Live on benefits
2. Work to re skill in something which does have a job locally
3. Start asking the supermarkets if they have a job and forget your skills and qualifications

Stark choice. I've been there, 50% local unemployment, nobody hiring, college and no job after leaving the Army, ET and begging for a job after college....

That was the late 80's and early 90's. Before Maastricht came into force and the new 12 joined the EU... It's worse now and the need to be mobile is greater.

[TheOstrich]

Have to agree with you Frank. Regarding zero hours contracts, for most people they are an abomination and demoralising. However, for students and pensioners who want a couple of hours work a week and don't mind when, they can work very well.

My last job in accountancy was effectively a zero hours contract; that is how my contract was written on paper. "We do not guarantee you work". In practice, I could manage my own workload and do it when I wanted to do it, just as long as Companies House and HMR&C deadlines were met. Some weeks I worked 50 hours. Others as low as 10. It got me out of the drudgery of 9 to 5 and TBH, being at the tail-end of my career, it worked for me.

But for people like Dean, with a family to look after, it's totally inappropriate and scandalous.

[Workingman]

The problems for the guy Cromwell knows cannot be laid at the door of the EU. His problems are created by business, employment agencies and their abuse of zero hour contracts, along with the fact that he is in a high unemployment area.

There are parts of West and South Yorkshire that have never recovered from the pit closures when, overnight, two and three generations of the menfolk in some towns and villages were put out of work. In the aftermath there was little or no inward investment and nothing to retrain to. It was only slowly that some work has become available, but most of that is in transport depots and warehousing along the arterial roads. Some of these places are bigger than two or three football pitches yet they only have a minimum workforce because most of the work is automated. There certainly is not enough work to go round.

Those are Dean's realities. His choices really are stark.

Being mobile or "Get on yer bike", as Lord Tebbit said from the comfort of his inherited mansion, is one of the finest theories dreamt up by government. In practice it is impossible for the overwhelming majority, especially those with families and mortgages. Yes, it can work for some, but it is not the panacea it is made out to be.

[Suff]

WM, Fife was and is no better. Same pit issues. Yes it had a small technical revolution but that is going away now. Replaced with places like an Amazon depot. We all know how that works for employment.

you say

His problems are created by business, employment agencies and their abuse of zero hour contracts

You know where my sympathies lie there. Massive inward employment from the EU keeps the unemployed where they are. Zero Hour contracts are a mechanism to manage the cost of employees in a country with an ever increasing minimum wage controlled by the government. Zero hour contracts reduce the holiday entitlement and other benefits...

Edinburgh saw a 10% rise in population in 2 years, totally from EU inwards labour migration. It is totally impossible for that NOT to impact available jobs.

Given that Edinburgh was a viable daily commute from FIFE, that massively impacted the jobs market.

It is simply not viable to say that employment mobility from the EU is not sucking up jobs from the UK where the workforce is either unwilling or unable to be location flexible.

[Workingman]

Massive inward employment from the EU keeps the unemployed where they are.

No it does not, the system keeps them where they are. Immigration (and its advantages to the immigrants I already outlined) only exacerbates their plight.

Even if we were not in the EU the the jobs would be in one place and the potential workers in another. That is the folly of London centric, and its hinterland, policies of governments past and present.

Immigrants flock to London and the SE because that is where the jobs are. Brits cannot do the same because of the problems I have already mentioned.

What should we do? Concrete over the SE and empty the Northern cities, or spread the load and give everyone a chance?

It now appears that spreading the load is the 'in' thing. The government wants to create a "Northern Powerhouse" because it recognises that centring everything on London and the SE isn't working. It's a shame nobody in government realised that when they ripped the heart out of our Northern communities.

[Diflower]

Being willing to be mobile isn't the same as being able to be mobile though is it?!

Say you're a man; you rent in a cheap area, with a family. A job comes up but in an area with probably twice the rent but not a very good salary.
You have a couple of children of school age, maybe one's in the middle of GCSEs, and your wife works part-time. Not a very well-paid job but she's been doing it a long time and it's reliable income.
Added to which both sets of grandparents are nearby and regularly help out with fetching and carrying the children, and sitting the one who's too young to be left on their own...it's not just about the job, especialy if it might disappear a week after you up sticks and move

[Workingman]

Good point, and well made Di.

Security of employment is the key, and it does not exist with ZHCs.