Ending free movement is essential for a thriving workforce
BUSINESS leaders complain they can’t attract British workers for many UK industry, agriculture or transport roles. They say they have to recruit from abroad or their businesses will suffer. I have a solution — a trick used for years by British companies before mass immigration let them recruit from poorer countries emerging from the collapse of the old Soviet union. They improved wage levels and working conditions so their job offers became attractive to British workers, not just to those desperate for anything better than poverty levels of pay in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. Of course, living like students in multiple-occupation dwellings, these workers can easily survive and even send money home. But British workers, trying to support a family, cannot possibly compete. It is always more attractive for an employer to bring in cheap foreign labour than to raise its employment offer to attract local staff. But this should only be allowed by the Government where competitive forces mean that a whole industry would disappear if employers were prevented from hiring from overseas. This may be the case with some seasonal agricultural work, but is rarely true otherwise. Train drivers recently refused an offer that would see them earning £75,000 per year, while coach drivers struggle to earn £25,000 and many suffer unpleasant working conditions. To my knowledge there are no Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian train drivers in the UK, but national bus and coach companies might well be described as international, given how many of their drivers are from overseas, keeping wages low. Wages are a matter of supply and demand: if you reduce the supply of eastern european workers, wages will rise and working conditions will improve to attract local staff. This is how things would have continued to work were it not for our crazy policy of free movement. The true price of eu membership has been paid by millions of British workers in their wages every month. ending free movement is not negotiable.
ANDREW KELSEY, litlington, Cambs.