THE shadow minister for immigration, Bryant, yesterday ran away from confronting Tesco and Next over employing migrant workers at reduced wages in place of British workers.
Instead, in his speech he made non specific allegations about the use of cheap labour, but paid moving tributes to the two companies, which moved the media reps to ask him at the end of his oration whether he had been nobbled by Tesco and Next.
Our hero said that in the fiery first drafts of the speech, given to the press in advance, he had never meant to imply that Tesco and Next were ‘unscrupulous employers.’
Even the Tory MP for Harlow, Robert Halfon, said afterwards that he would describe the way that Tesco had acted in closing down its ‘incredibly productive’ Harlow distribution centre and moving it to Dagenham employing foreign workers at much reduced rates of pay, as ‘ruthless’.
The Labour Party leaders have shown once again that they will not fight the bosses, that they will not indict the capitalists for the crisis of capitalism, and have no solution to the capitalist crisis.
Instead of indicting the bosses, Bryant in his speech sought to appease the racist vote by bringing back the British jobs for British workers scenario, implying that Polish and other workers who are recruited to work in the UK at cut rates are responsible for the UK jobs crisis.
Polish and other workers have not caused the jobs crisis, it is the crisis of capitalism that is responsible.
It is ‘natural’ that the bosses seek to use mass unemployment and foreign workers to cut wages, and weaken trade unions in the UK.
But foreign workers have not caused this crisis. They are not responsible for the fact that hourly wages in the UK have fallen 5.5% since mid-2010, the fourth-worst decline in the 27-nation EU bloc, whereas German hourly wages rose by 2.7% over the same period.
It is not foreign workers who are responsible for the millions of people who are now being put on zero hours contracts in the UK, where they are not guaranteed a working week, have no holiday pay or pensions, and no job security of any kind.
As well, the TUC analysis of the labour force survey shows that between December 2010 and December 2012 the number of temporary workers increased by 89,000 to reach 1,650,000 – nearly half (46 per cent) of the total rise in employment.
The TUC analysis shows that involuntary temporary work – people doing temp jobs because they cannot find permanent work – has been growing sharply for a number of years. In 2005, the number of involuntary temporary workers (263,298) was broadly similar to the number of ‘voluntary’ temp workers who didn’t want a permanent job (243,703).
However, by the end of 2012 the number of involuntary temporary workers had more than doubled to 655,000, while the number of voluntary temporary workers has increased by 42 per cent to 345,000.
Workers are being forced into temporary work and a massive fall in their living standards.
The TUC adds that ‘casual work – for example, someone who is not part of the permanent workforce but supplies work on an irregular basis – has been the fastest growing form of temporary work, soaring by 62,000 in the last two years alone.’
The TUC finds that: ‘The increased casualisation of the workforce is bad for workers, who are likely to earn less, and are unable to progress their careers or plan ahead. It is also bad for the economy as low-paid, insecure work is less productive and holds back consumer spending power.’
None of this is the fault of foreign workers.
The trade unions must call Labour to order and condemn it for blaming migrants for the jobs crisis.
The TUC must take the lead. It must fight zero hours contracts, and organise workers to fight wage cutting and smash the wage freeze with wage rises that match the increases in the cost of living.
To resolve the crisis it must call a general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government and socialism. It must bring forward the basic slogan of Marx and Engels – ‘Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!’
