New arrivals are vulnerable. Take a look at the Tjobs.ro site, where UK agencies offer British work to Romanians. (It's quite easy to decipher: Romanian looks like Esperanto.) See these jobs for 18- to 24-year-olds, as "apprentices", who only need to be paid the apprentice rate of £2.68 an hour, not the £6.31 minimum wage. The ad offers hotel and catering work for Hilton Hotels, Chelsea Football Club, Marriott hotels, Abbey Care homes and many others. The pay? £650-£1,000 a month, or so it says. Travel and accommodation are provided – but would they be deducted? Would uniforms, travel time and equipment be deducted? Is it
piece-work, is it zero hours? Those are commonplace tricks to bring pay far below the minimum wage.
Goodness knows where Victor Spiresau will live. He says his employer will accommodate him, but he may find himself crammed into a hot-bedding house, with 16 people sleeping in shifts. A single man for a short stay may bear it, but no one with a family could live that way. David Hanson, shadow home office minister, debating the immigration bill going through parliament, pulled out ads from the EasyPoland site for rates of pay for British jobs that are illegal: £5.93 an hour for an office worker, £6 for an industrial sewer, £5.80 for a carpenter, all reading ominously "Accommodation: must bring bedding". That site yesterday had an ad for a care assistant, charging £85 rent, with the familiar note: "Company owns the accommodation and will deduct from wages.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/02/curb-immigration-pay-workers-living-wage