There are lots of working class jobs that pay higher than lots of grad positions.

Doctors get paid about half what a tube driver makes too. Best grad position I have seen pays 2/3rds of that tube driver job.

When cleaners are elite never advertised highly union controlled jobs given essentially by seniority to current employees within the company then we can make that comparison if you'd like.

wtf is a tube driver???

A driver in the tube, not of tubes.

Tube = London underground rail system

I thought it was a pretty clear win for out last night on the ITV debate, however that hasn't been reflected in the betting - certainly not to the extent of the big drift after the Farage/Cameron debate. I also thought the outers had the better of things during Question Time.

The whole 'migrant workers depress wages' thing seems suspect. These people still have to live in the UK, their costs are the same as the rest of us and their aspirations will rise as they integrate into the population.

There might be a temporary glut of employees at the lower end of the wage spectrum, but overall the impact will be negligible.

It's not as though we don't need the workers - despite the 'mass waves of immigration' unemployment remains stubbornly at historical lows.

Lets put £12 per hour number aside for the moment and lower it to say, £8.30 rather than £7.20.

You've admitted that we need working-class people to support the higher salaried employees. I'm off to work in the moment and the company employs cleaners in the office for instance. They're obviously totally necessary because obviously the kitchen will become uninhabitable and the toilets will be disgusting for any clients we host etc.

Suppose no-one will be a cleaner for £7.20 per hour, but there are a fair few people who would be cleaners for £8.30 per hour. Are you seriously telling me that a major international company in London is going to 1) take a huge risk by employing illegal workers or 2) ask its own staff to clean the loos?

Or will it 3) simply pony up and pay that little bit extra?

Its a bit of a case of Schrodinger's immigrant. Willing to "do the jobs Brits don't want to do" but having no effect on wages and conditions

There are no prices in the sky hovvering over people Phil. The word 'deserve' is completely subjective. The value of your job is the amount that you can force your employer to pay you - the amount that it takes to get you to work.

The idea that cleaning is 'worth' £7.20 per hour and that any increase is somehow 'artificial' is completely baseless.

Regardless of whether its good for the economy as a whole or the costs of employing working-class low-skilled employees are passed on to the consumers, it is perfectly rational for working-class people to vote Leave.

PS: I'm glad to hear that you're well-versed in how scummy the Tube unions are. There should be so much more outrage about that.

PPS: For any foreigners reading the thread; yes. we're serious. London Underground drivers earn £52,000 per year and get something like 45 days per year annual holiday as well.

The good news is that tube drivers' jobs should be easy to automate and their ludicrous salaries provide the incentive to do so.

Wiki says £49,673, but w/e.

Yes it's a good salary, but it's a very tough job, psychologically. Depending which line you're on you might not see daylight much of the day and may have to deal with the trauma of someone jumping under your train. Rates of depression are much higher than average. Those are not normal working conditions that most people experience, and most people dont want to do the job.

Its more or less conceded as true, even by the Remain campaign. Who simply don't consider it a good thing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...aign-says.html

Yeah - no-one's saying that Poles and Lithuanians etc. are some kind of a 'slave race' that we're importing en masse who'll never ever raise their aspirations generation to generation if they settle permanently. Hell I spoke to an operational risk manager at Barclays the other day who's Polish. High-skilled East Europeans do exist don't ya know lol.

The issue is the circular migration at the bottom end of the spectrum (your average Polish/Romanian plumber or cleaner who works for a cheap wage between the age of 20-40 or so, can send child benefit (at a British rate) back home to their family in Romania where it's worth much more etc) and then heads back home to buy a house/retire/afford to work more cheaply.

Now obviously these migrants are brilliant for the economy. They cost nothing to educate, they take v. little out of the pension pot and NHS as they head home before they're elderly etc. However, to say that there are no negative effects from their effect on wages is simply untrue.

I'm re-posting the James Bloodworth article again because it pretty much nails it. He's a very left-wing, pro-immigration guy who writes for (I think maybe founded) LeftFootForward but I haven't ever seen an article about immigration that's quite so well-balanced in a long time.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-workin...ration-1561735

If bolded were true then they wouldn't have to operate a closed shop whereby the job is only advertised to TFL staff and tube drivers are selected by union officials.

You're not seriously suggesting that if we had a free market we couldn't get people to drive a tube for less than £49,673 (got a feeling that's increasing with the intro of the night tube to £52k) per annum are you?

I mean lol we're talking about low-skilled East European migration and people working for £7.20 per hour and you don't think that across the 400-500Mn people in Europe we'd find people able and willing to drive the tube for £30,000 per annum and 25 days holiday.

Cityboy, I read the article. Honestly I think that he's full of crap, and may actually be lying about the whole experience or fabricating large parts of the story - it lacks the ring of truth.

Biggest question, if the 'large multinational' in question is actually committing employment fraud, why hasn't he named and shamed them? Why are they not reported to the authorities?

Whatever the issues raised (will come back to this later when I have time), I do not believe his story.

it's just a made up concern. when we do studies on it we more or less always* find basically no change.

*unless it's george borjas

But the main argument for immigration is that immigrants are net contributors to the economy. This study shows that EU-10 immigrants currently take out more than they contribute, and that's before we have built the infrastructure to accommodate them. So, if we go back to your original argument that:

We are (or will) have to borrow this money to build the infrastructure AND they are a net drain on the economy as the 12% return is a historical figure, not a current one.

I think there are (or have been) good arguments for allowing some low skilled migrants into the UK, however i'm not sure those augments exist anymore, or at least there will be a tipping point where there are little or no benefits to low skilled migration, and if we are in the EU, we can do nothing about it.

On the other hand they can bring London to a standstill for months before that happens.

The multinational (lol blatantly Amazon) isn't committing employment fraud and nowhere in the story does he claim this. A company like Amazon will employ its workforce on zero-hours contracts through recruitment agencies who pay through an external payroll (hence the error he mentions).

For the neutrals reading the thread with an open mind, this actually is a great example of the level of denial associated with wage depression caused by globalisation. Literally "I don't believe it whatever..." and "you can't disprove my claim that all your evidence is completely made up".

Very reminiscent of global warming denial.

This is why immigration has become such a hot topic in the UK referendum.

So what would happen to my company if, hypothetically speaking, they couldn't attract any staff to clean the loos for £7.20 per hour? After all, it's claimed that British people 'won't do those jobs' right? So if we Brexit that's a real possibility.

So what will happen? Will the credit risk managers all have to get busy with the toilet brush after their morning poop? Or will the bank simply cough up whatever the per-hour price it takes to get people to clean the loos?

Where does it show that, which study?

youre just throwing stuff at the wall hoping something sticks. stop being this dumb.

Stay will win.

Every single voting referendum I can remember all over the world related to leaving something or declaring independence has always failed (Quebec a few times, Scotland, etc.)

As much as people love to bitch about the status quo, they almost always choose it.

It was the peer reviewed study that this article was drawn from. The study was done by Christian Dustmann, Professor of Economics at University College London, so a respectable author.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-arti...EU-immigration

Here is the link to the original study:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...12181/abstract

I guess if nothing else it demonstrates that although this research highlights the overall benefits of immigration, they chose to gloss over the negative aspects (recent EU-10 migration) as I assume it doesn't sit with their personal beliefs, and demonstrates that even peer reviewed work is not immune to personal biases, even when the author is a leader in their academic field.

Someone who says "give me some more money or you can walk to work"

You mean the study I linked to previously in the UK POL thread, maybe even in this one cba to check.

Yea but where does it show your claim?

There's something about that article that doesn't pass the smell test. To be clear, I do not believe that this journalist spent a whole month working undercover to write a short article that a) doesn't name the company involved and b) is so very, very light on detail.

On the employment fraud he says:

Sufficient break periods are a legal requirement, otherwise he's just saying 'not enough for my liking'.

For agency workers this is normal, they have a contract with the agency. If employed directly then they must have contracts. He fails to specify how he was employed.

Yet he conspicuously fails to provide even a single example. The implication is that this may be illegal, but no substance.

And this is where he really fails to make his case. There aren't British workers clamouring for these jobs. It's very easy for Amazon to relocate this business to Romania if UK workers price themselves out of the market. What happens then to small ex-mining town Rugeley when all those workers stop spending their hard earned cash in the local shops?

Same thing as when the ever striking miners priced themselves out of the coal market in the 80's.

Ironic no?

You've backtracked. You originally claimed that the article was accusing the employer of illegal or fraudulent employment. Now you're saying that he's implying it, which obviously you can assert without evidence.

EU regulation stipulates a 15 minute break and 30 minutes unpaid for lunch for every 3 or 3 1/2 hours work (I forget which exactly - I used to work in a callcentre during my years at Uni).

The point he's making isn't that this is illegal - but that it absolutely sucks. It lies in the window of jobs that Brits won't do but that Eastern Europeans will tolerate. Which begs the question; what if those migrants weren't there?

I don't think you can outsource Amazon's UK delivery warehouses to Romania old buddy.

What would happen if net migration was limited and no Brits were willing to work in the delivery warehouses for £7.20 per hour? Would Amazon pony up and pay them the £8.50 or whatever it took to get them to do the job?

Or would Amazon cease all business in the 5th largest economy in the world because an extra pound or two on their min wage employees would render their business unprofitable?

Please feel free to quote where I claimed that he was accusing them of illegal employment. It's the fact that he didn't that I have issue with.

I asked why, if they were committing illegal acts (as the article strongly implies without explicitly stating that) they had not been named and shamed or reported to the authorities.

I was accusing the journo of 'sexing up' the language to imply legal misdeeds without actually explicitly accusing the employer of anything illegal.

Yes of course many people would be willing to drive tubes for that salary, but many people would also be willing to do CityBoys' jobs for a lot less than they're paid, so what does that prove? Would you be willing to take a 40% pay cut (which is what you're suggesting for tube drivers)?

Meanwhile, back in the underground, tube drivers aren't playing any part in a banking crisis.