Ending race discrimination law is a weak response to job competition
Anna Sonny, 13 March 2015
This week Nigel Farage successfully whipped up another race row by saying that he would end much of the race discrimination law in the workplace, in an apparent attempt to defend the interest of British workers.
But Farage is shockingly wide of the mark here, especially given the unsavoury views of some of his own former party members, who, despite being kicked out of the party after their racism was exposed still managed to rise up Ukip’s ranks in the first place. Ukip members themselves have given us many perfect examples as to why racial discrimination laws are still necessary today. Imagine if former Ukip councillor Rozanne Duncan was in charge of hiring at a firm; after her racist diatribe about her ‘problem with negroes’ on Meet the Ukippers, broadcast last month on the BBC, we can be sure that anyone with ‘negroid features’ wouldn’t get a look in.
Of course, Farage insists that rather than making the issue about race, he is trying to do what’s best for British workers, both black and white. He specifically gave the example of giving bosses the freedom to choose between a British and a Polish worker. But his comments show that he has no grasp of the nature of racial discrimination; discrimination law protects job applicants not only from overt racism but also from those insidious prejudices can seep insidiously into the psyche without us even being aware of it at times. You know, those kinds of prejudices that might lead someone to say that they would be concerned if a group of Romanian men moved in next door to them, for example.
Whether we like it or not, we are currently an EU member state, so for the time being, we are bound to the rules of freedom of movement and labour. This labour mobility can either give us an excuse to bash immigrants for taking British jobs or it can encourage us to upskill. For example, skilled Europeans moving here to work will most likely have more than one language under their belt, whereas language-learning in the UK has declined in the last couple of decades. An Economist article on this decline mentions that in a survey of 8,000 British companies, 96% had no foreign-language speakers and first-time exporters in the UK cited language as a barrier to entering international markets. Upskilling generations takes time and funding and the government should be spending money on helping Britons to gain more skills through subsidies and grants. Britain’s younger generation is especially in need of this; they are being squeezed out of the housing market, deterred from education by sky-high tuition fees and cut off from receiving benefits right after they graduate. They need as much advantage as they can get when it comes to employment.
Giving British employers the option to discriminate against foreigners is a woefully inadequate response to job competition from Europe. A more sensible and proactive response would be to equip Britons with the skills they need to compete with foreign job seekers, and to compete fairly.
You can add this to the reasons why British workers are ignored.
Brussels offers UK firms £1,000 cash ‘bribes’ to hire foreign workers
Business Minister Matthew Hancock said firms have a duty to hire Britons
Said filling vacancies with well-trained foreign workers was an ‘easy option’
Employers receive up to £870 for every EU citizen from outside the UK
Firms can recruit up to 20 foreign workers a year through the EU scheme
By JASON GROVES, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
PUBLISHED: 23:07, 26 July 2013 | UPDATED: 11:28, 27 July 2013
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Brussels is offering British firms cash ‘bribes’ of almost £1,000 a time to take on foreign workers.
Thousands of youngsters are also being offered payments totalling more than £1,100 to take a job in Britain under the European Commission scheme.
The extraordinary initiative appears to directly undermine Government efforts to persuade firms to take on British workers as the recovery takes hold.
In an interview with the Daily Mail yesterday the Business Minister Matthew Hancock said firms had a duty to hire Britons rather than taking the ‘easy option’ of filling vacancies with well-trained foreign workers.
The joint initiative between British JobCentres and the European Commission offer incentives including £870 for every EU citizen employed by a UK firm and a grant of £260 for applicants to travel to Britain for an interview
The joint initiative between British JobCentres and the European Commission offer incentives including £870 for every EU citizen employed by a UK firm and a grant of £260 for applicants to travel to Britain for an interview
Firms taking on non-UK workers qualify for a payment from Brussels worth up to £870 for every EU citizen they employ, to help pay for English lessons and other training.
Employers can recruit up to 20 foreign workers a year through the EU scheme, which is run with the co-operation of British JobCentres.
Jobless youngsters across Europe can qualify for a grant of £260 to travel to Britain for an interview.
If they land the job they also qualify for an £870 grant to help with the costs of moving to this country.
Yesterday more than 800,000 UK jobs were being advertised through the scheme – more than half the total across Europe.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2379477/Brussels-offers-UK-firms-1-000-cash-bribes-hire-foreign-workers.html#ixzz3UIH4WQlq
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Point 1. Farage is leading a party which wishes to take the UK out of the EU so the fact that we are still in the EU is irrelevant to his immigration policy.
Point 2. Many of the jobs taken by immigrants never come onto the open British labour market. Instead they are advertised abroad or become the province of foreign gangmasters in Britain who only employ their own country men.
Point 3. The fact that anyone thinks Farage’s proposal to favour our own people is an extreme racist position shows how outlandishly mainstream British politicians, the mainstream media and all the hangers on who complete the liberal elite have distorted the meaning of racism and how utterly devoid of any sense of the national interest they are.
Point 4. We supposedly live in a democracy. That by definition means that the native population have the right to say who comes and works here. This is being entirely ignored at present by those who rule us, with the criminal law being used to suppress native British dissent about mass immigration and its effects.
Point 5. If a referendum was held in Britain asking who should be allowed to settle in Britain what do you imagine the outcome would be?