Wednesday, December 11, 2013

UK immigration minister criticises pizza boss

Regular readers will know that I'm not a great admirer of the UK Conservative Party. Nonetheless, today I have something positive to say about one leading member of that party, the Immigration Minister Mark Harper.

It was reported yesterday that the boss of the Domino's pizza chain in the UK, Lance Batchelor, wants another mass influx of overseas workers into the UK. He claimed that he couldn't find enough staff for his pizza shops from within the UK (and the EU).

He was supported by Sir Stuart Rose, the former boss of a supermarket chain. According to him, it is right that companies offer low pay as long as there is someone round the world willing to accept the work:
the former boss of Marks & Spencer, Sir Stuart Rose, also attacked the work ethic of many Britons and said it was wrong to criticise immigrants prepared to work for lower salaries.

Sir Stuart added: "It is up to people to decide whether they want to do the work for the pay that is being offered. If they don’t, somebody else is there to do it. What’s wrong with that?...I’m a free market economist – we operate in a free market. If these people want to come here, and work the hours they are prepared to work for the wages they are prepared to work for, then so be it."

I'm afraid that Sir Stuart Rose's comments are a good example of why I am not an absolute supporter of free market economics (though I am generally sympathetic to a market economy). If Sir Stuart had his way, the wages of British workers would fall to the lowest level that any migrant from around the world would be willing to work at.

It shows a gross lack of the virtue of fidelity: he is not standing in a faithful relationship with his own countrymen and willing what is good for them.

The good news is that Mark Harper, the Immigration Minister, was having none of it and rebuked the two men:
Businesses complaining about a lack of British applicants to fill job vacancies should pay higher wages, the immigration minister declared last night.

Mark Harper said that, if firms were unable to find willing workers, they were not paying the market rate and should ‘reflect’ on the salary package they are offering.

Mr Harper said there was no question of the government relaxing immigration rules so Domino’s could ‘keep wages low’.

He pointed out that Domino’s can recruit staff from within the entire EU without restrictions – an area that covers 500million people.

Mr Harper told a committee of MPs: ‘If out of a market of hundreds of millions of people you cannot find enough people to work in your restaurant, you should look at how much you are paying.

‘Dominos should pay what the market demands to fill their roles’

There is something else that Sir Stuart Rose and Lance Batchelor should consider. It is not always laziness that leads a local worker to reject a job that an immigrant worker is willing to take. It is often the case that local workers can't afford to do so.

For instance, if you're a male British worker and are offered a job on minimal pay you are likely to harm your position when it comes to attracting a possible future wife. But for a male immigrant that wage might look good to a woman from his home country.

Similarly, a male British worker has to look for accommodation standards that the women of his own community would accept, something that transient migrant workers might not have to worry about.

It's the case too in the US that undocumented migrant workers don't have to pay tax on their earnings and can therefore live on a lower wage than a local.

I can understand a local worker looking at a substandard pay offer and wondering why it would be worth accepting if it didn't provide him with an opportunity to establish a family of his own.

8 comments:

  1. Local people don't take these low paid jobs because they are better off on benefits with housing paid by the Government. They can also pick up a bit of work on the black market and make some untaxed income. Below subsistence wage jobs are taken up by non EU migrants who are not eligible for welfare and are prepared to live in crowded, filthy and often illegal accommodation.

    Rose by ancestry is not purely British. He is a mixture of Russian and Greek and therefore essentially an alien in the UK without a good family pedigree. This is the most likely explanation for his lack of loyalty to the native British people.

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  2. I hope Australian Liberals and American Republicans will follow the UK lead on this one. Even though the Tories are the Big Business party, they have never been as viscerally traitorous on immigration as the other parties now are. Labour of course directly harms their own indigenous core voters with their uncontrolled immigration policy.

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  3. Big business love globalisation until we start buying electronics from overseas and they try to get the GST applied to these purchases. Kinda reveals the truth about why they believe in mass immigration, childlessness and worker mobility so much.

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  4. For real Conservative Politics to grow there must be complete opposition to Ultra Low Wage jobs and by Ultra Low Wage I mean where once minimum living costs are addressed and deductions applied you pay net no Tax. When people pay net no Tax they do see things from the Government as "free" and are open to bribes by Socialist Governments however if Conservatives defend wages high enough that net tax is payed everyone knows nothing is "free". It is only when even a very Low Wage like say 30K has a net tax of say 5K can a policy to encourage Traditional Families, like income splitting work, if each individual already pays nothing the policy does nothing.

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  5. Call this for what it is--white GEnocide.

    These people need to be thrown in jail for supporting it.

    Today in London, Canada, the Kellogg's corn flake company which was located there for 100 years has announced it is closing the plant and moving to Thailand.

    Average wage of a worker in Thailand --- $10 per day

    Fine Kellogg's, BUT no more selling your product in Canada. Period.

    AFrica for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for Everyone??? NO MORE.

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  6. Dear Mr. Richardson

    I wonder if you could pass my CV onto Sir Stuarts Board of Directors. I was not born in the United Kingdom thereby proving that I'm a harder worker than Sir Stuart and I'm prepared to work for a lot less than what they pay him.

    After all in a world that worships equality shouldn't the top get the same treatment as the bottom?

    Mark Moncrieff
    Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future

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  7. Just a quibble, Mark. Free Market (or, Free Enterprise) economics are perfectly acceptable within a community. When you globalise or internationalise the Free Market, then you get the problems described in your post (destabilising effects of free transport of capital, demographic problems of free movement of labour). All I'm saying is, don't throw the free market out with the internationalist bath water.

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