There are many causes behind migration. One of the commonest cited is skill shortages. But as liberal economists argue, that’s often a misnomer. All that is in fact happening is a wage shortage: raise the wages and sufficient skilled workers will appear. Today, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and KPMG have issued a report today which suggests the liberal economists are right. They say that employers facing skill shortages would employ more British workers if they could pay them less (rather suggesting the skills are available, but at a price employers don’t want to pay).

Exploiting migrant workers to undercut the existing workforce simply sets worker against worker. And whilst employers may benefit in the short run from lower wage costs, the BNP are more likely to be the long term beneficiaries.

Instead, unions have been arguing that paying migrants the same as the existing workforce (and giving them all the other rights we have won over the years) is the best way to combat exploitation, undercutting and racial strife. The national minimum wage has had some effect in making undercutting less possible, but the CIPD take potshots at that, too. Read more »

   Filed under: Earnings, Migration, Minimum wage | 1 Comment »

The American TUC, the AFL-CIO, reports that progressive think tanks have produced a report which sets out how immigration can work for both the economy as a whole, existing workforces and the migrants themselves. In Raising the Floor for American Workers, the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center indicate that the current US system is unsustainable.

Attempts to close the border and crack down on illegal immigrants don’t work. What is needed, instead, is to ensure that everyone working in the US is treated fairly, and migrants should be offered a path to citizenship so that they don’t disappear into the informal economy. This is pretty much the same prescription as the TUC and others have advocated for the UK.

   Filed under: Migration | Comments Off

Last week, the Prime Minister, and before him, the Home Secretary, made major speeches on immigration. They both claimed to understand ‘the problem’ and be ready to address it. They gave the impression that this is a really new debate, and that they were ready, at last, to take action. Today the Director of the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) hit back in the Financial Times (on a page you have to pay to view, ironically enough) so I thought a TUC comment might provide some balance. However, mostly, we agree with the ASI: immigration policy is too tough already and is set to get worse, whichever party policy you read. Read more »

   Filed under: Migration, Vulnerable workers | 1 Comment »

The Migration Advisory Committee has published another report on reforms to the Points-Based System of migration, and the TUC’s response welcomes some of the steps proposed (we’ll issue a more detailed, considered response in due course) which could tighten up the protections against abuses of the migration system. As always, our concern is to prevent exploitation and undercutting, protecting both migrant and the existing workforce. But one thought nags at me. Throughout the MAC press release, there are references to measures which will protect jobs for “British” workers. That makes me nervous. I think it’s dangerous, inappropriate and misguided. Read more »

   Filed under: Migration | 1 Comment »

The doyen of migration economics, Prof Christian Dustmann at UCL, has published research showing that East European migrants pay more in taxes than they use in social protection. Indeed they put in 30% more than they take out, unlike UK-born adults who claim more than they pay! Read more »

   Filed under: Earnings, Migration, Vulnerable workers | 2 Comments »

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, speaking on a panel discussion at the ETUC’s conference, has argued that unions need to ‘fight the crisis’ but also seize the opportunity to ‘win the recovery’.

Comparing the current crisis to the 1980s, he argued against complacency in the face of the recession (especially highlighting the need to protect vulnerable workers such as young people), against beggar-my-neighbour policies and for a rebalancing of the global economy. Read more »

   Filed under: Europe, Financial crisis, G20, Inequality, Migration, Recession | 1 Comment »

The usual debate about migration into the UK is about restrictions, about ‘floods’ or waves of immigration, about how to prevent people coming to the UK to live and work. But we may be facing another challenge: how to attract more migrants to the UK. Human geographer Danny Dorling has produced a paper for the Institute of Public Policy Research which shows that over the next half century, Britain may be less of a migrant magnet than the Daily Mail and Migration Watch assume. We may be facing a shortage, instead.

Writing on the Guardian website, he says

“there is a real risk that declining fertility will create a ‘need’ for migration which will not be met.”

Read more »

   Filed under: Migration | 1 Comment »

The IPPR report on migration and labour markets (trailed in the FT and the Guardian today) shows that the effect of migration on wages, if it exists at all, has been very small (0.3% for every 1% increase in the proportion of migrants in the labour market – ie from 9% to 10% of the labour force). And, although this may not be clear from the reports, it doesn’t mean migration has actually reduced wages - it means that they have been growing marginally less fast than they otherwise would (wages have – certainly until the recession – been growing consistently in real terms for years).

Since migration leads to growth, and it’s growth that drives wage increases (and exploitation and vulnerability keep wages down), the overall effect of migration is still likely to be positive at a macro-economic level, and of course indispensable if you want care for the elderly, a restaurant trade, a health service and fresh locally-grown vegetables. Read more »

   Filed under: Migration, Vulnerable workers | 2 Comments »

Over the weekend, the Home Secretary announced further restrictions on migrant labour. In reality they were not as tough as they were spun. Some of them were just entirely sensible measures such as requiring that jobs be advertised locally first (which already applies in most cases anyway), and using indications of skill shortages to trigger training initiatives. But the restrictions on highly skilled migrant visas and the tone of the announcement were part of a tightening of migration policy. Isn’t that the sort of protectionism that Ministers criticise unions for?

And it would be too simplistic to suggest that the following measures were reprisals, but at the same time, the Australians announced plans to cut the number of skilled migrant visas that allow UK workers to emigrate, and the Czech Republic announced plans to pay unemployed migrant workers to return to their countries of origin.

There couldn’t be a clearer indication that protectionism breeds more protectionism.

   Filed under: Globalisation, Migration | 1 Comment »

Trade unions are under persistent attacks for ‘protectionism’ at the moment, and as we begin a recession that will be made deeper and longer if protectionism flourishes, that’s a pretty serious charge. It’s also false. Unions are indeed in favour of protecting workers. But that’s not the same as protectionism. And very often it’s the people who accuse us of protectionism who are the real protectionists. At the very least, such people are playing a very dangerous game, likely to provoke precisely the protectionism they claim to oppose.

The latest charge is in the Economist’s Charlemagne column, which says:

The single market is firmly in the left’s sights. The European Trade Union Confederation, an umbrella body, has drafted a new “social protocol” it wants to add to the next EU treaty, saying the single market “is not an end in itself”, but must be balanced by “social progress”. That would split the EU between old and new members, and play into the hands of economic nationalists. A great deal is at stake as this crisis deepens. Without a lot of vigilance, the single market could be derailed.

Such a lengthy charge list. And so, so wrong. Read more »

   Filed under: Employment law, Europe, Globalisation, Migration | Comments Off