Eu workers over British.

[BimboBob]

Could well be!. Or are they told what to send?. They're actually probably given a list of suitable workers via the agency and they then take their pick.

We used 3 preferred agencies. 2 were locally based, one recruited from Eastern Europe. All had the same brief. How many can you provide on a temp to perm contract?
Must be English speaking as due to EU rules there were a lot of health and safety regs.
That was it.

Through these agencies we employed men, women, old and young.

Some left, lots stayed but they were chosen for their skills and not because they were Eastern European.

It sounds like your company uses 1agency, probably based either abroad or has a office there. Which is why you don't see many English coming in.

Why do they do this? We paid the staff around 7.50 an hour. An agency will add between 5 to 7 pounds per hour as a charge to the company. A foreign based agency will have charged a bit less.

There's your answer.

Cost.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

One thing you have to consider is that if someone is willing to move half way across a continent to get work, they're probably going to be pretty hard-working and professional about things. My old boss used to tell me stories about the sort of people who often got applying to work in the kitchen of his restaurant, and a large number of them were applying with absolutely no intention of actually getting the job, just to be able to report to the Job Centre that they'd applied. In that situation, it would be very easy to become prejudiced against British workers. And there definitely have been a few examples of employers using agencies that exclusively advertise outside of the UK, which has got to be discrimination.

Something that really irritates me about the immigration debate is how politicians on both sides use it as an excuse to not properly fund training for the native population. We constantly hear how the NHS would collapse without the immigrant workforce, and no doubt that is true. But surely we're only in that situation because successive governments have failed to train up enough British workers to fulfill these roles? And presumably other countries manage without it. I can't imagine loads of Indian doctors and nurses are frantically learning Japanese or Finnish to plug gaps in those countries' health services, and yet they get by without any major problems. We're in a privileged position with the English language where we can pluck talent from around the world to meet skills shortages, but that shouldn't become an excuse to get all of your doctors and nurses for free from India or the Philippines (presumably at cost to their governments) at the expense of opportunities for local people to be trained up to do those jobs.

 

[aguero93:20]

Something that really irritates me about the immigration debate is how politicians on both sides use it as an excuse to not properly fund training for the native population. We constantly hear how the NHS would collapse without the immigrant workforce, and no doubt that is true. But surely we're only in that situation because successive governments have failed to train up enough British workers to fulfill these roles?

You're in that position because, like most wealthy western countries, you've got a slowing reproduction rate and a growing ageing population and without immigration, your economy would collapse.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

You're in that position because, like most wealthy western countries, you've got a slowing reproduction rate and a growing ageing population and without immigration, your economy would collapse.

Well there you have the major flaw of capitalism, where anything other than constant growth (which ultimately is impossible) is considered a failure. Japan hasn't grown significantly in real terms since the 80s, and yet I've been there and they seem to be doing alright. Don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with immigration (I live overseas myself), I can just understand why some people feel let down by a lack of training opportunities because companies can just go over to Romania and pick up a fully qualified tradesman to do the same job without having to bother training him. Why waste your time with an apprentice when you can get a bloke with 10 years experience to work for relatively low wages? My issue is with governments who can use immigration as an excuse not to properly fund training programmes.

 

[Dazzacity]

We used 3 preferred agencies. 2 were locally based, one recruited from Eastern Europe. All had the same brief. How many can you provide on a temp to perm contract?
Must be English speaking as due to EU rules there were a lot of health and safety regs.
That was it.

Through these agencies we employed men, women, old and young.

Some left, lots stayed but they were chosen for their skills and not because they were Eastern European.

It sounds like your company uses 1agency, probably based either abroad or has a office there. Which is why you don't see many English coming in.

Why do they do this? We paid the staff around 7.50 an hour. An agency will add between 5 to 7 pounds per hour as a charge to the company. A foreign based agency will have charged a bit less.

There's your answer.

Cost.

Yeah, it uses one agency. The woman that runs it is...... Polish.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

Well there you have the major flaw of capitalism, where anything other than constant growth (which ultimately is impossible) is considered a failure. Japan hasn't grown significantly in real terms since the 80s, and yet I've been there and they seem to be doing alright. Don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with immigration (I live overseas myself), I can just understand why some people feel let down by a lack of training opportunities because companies can just go over to Romania and pick up a fully qualified tradesman to do the same job without having to bother training him. Why waste your time with an apprentice when you can get a bloke with 10 years experience to work for relatively low wages? My issue is with governments who can use immigration as an excuse not to properly fund training programmes.

Correct, this is the reason for the dearth of apprenticeships, which used to be the route kids without academic skills took years ago.
Why spend time and money training plumbers and sparks when one can be picked up from the shelf? If it was my business I'd do the same.

 

[Dazzacity]

Correct, this is the reason for the dearth of apprenticeships, which used to be the route kids without academic skills took years ago.
Why spend time and money training plumbers and sparks when one can be picked up from the shelf? If it was my business I'd do the same.

But it just goes to show that our government don't actually give a fook about everyday British folk. It's just all about getting someone that will do the same job for less money. We're getting shafted.

 

[stonerblue]

But it just goes to show that our government don't actually give a fook about everyday British folk. It's just all about getting someone that will do the same job for less money. We're getting shafted.

Welcome to the real world

 

[Southbanken]

But it just goes to show that our government don't actually give a fook about everyday British folk. It's just all about getting someone that will do the same job for less money. We're getting shafted.

This isn't aimed just at you but at anyone making the "we need to protect our own" argument.

- How much of the food you eat is British made or grown?
- Do you only buy clothes that are made in the UK and made from UK grown products?
- Do you shop at a UK supermarket or one of the cheaper foreign ones? Does that Supermarket have a good reputation for treating its own staff and suppliers well?
- Ever used a cheap Irish airline at the expense of a British owned air travel provider?

Everyone looks for best value in all walks of personal and professional life, and if you live by the sword,m then you can't woman and moan when you die by the sword either.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

This isn't aimed just at you but at anyone making the "we need to protect our own" argument.

- How much of the food you eat is British made or grown?
- Do you only buy clothes that are made in the UK and made from UK grown products?
- Do you shop at a UK supermarket or one of the cheaper foreign ones? Does that Supermarket have a good reputation for treating its own staff and suppliers well?
- Ever used a cheap Irish airline at the expense of a British owned air travel provider?

Everyone looks for best value in all walks of personal and professional life, and if you live by the sword,m then you can't woman and moan when you die by the sword either.

What you are saying then is that there should be complete laissez-faire government. Ditch all and any protections (something, ironically eschewed by the EU),
and let the markets run free. Remove the minimum wage, allow immigration from anywhere, allow employers to pay what they like in wages, and prices will plummet, which they
would indeed, as workers would cost next to nothing.
What the OP is saying is the competition is weighted against him and other unskilled or semi skilled British workers, and rightly blaming our masters/EU/immigration for the results.