British jobs for British workers??

From: Borjabrela
Sent: Fri 13/02/2009 15:25
To: Work colleagues
Subject: I was wondering

I was wondering:

Do you agree with the statement: "British jobs for British workers", and do you agree with last week's strikes?

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From: Cheeky work colleague
Sent: Fri 13/02/2009 15:28
Subject: I was wondering

Anything to stop all those lazy Spanish who seem to be popping up all over the place ;)

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From: A motorhead work colleague
Sent: Fri 13/02/2009 15:32
Subject: I was wondering

Here here to what [our cheeky colleague] said ;). Seriously tho, can't comment on the strikes cos I have no idea what they were about. As for the jobs, there's a duty for a government to support its economy by creating - and making available - as many jobs as it can for its people, within reason. Equally the capitalist in me screams "no! Save as much money as you can! Use cheap foreign labour!".

Gut feeling - it is a bit frustrating to see loads of benefit frauds when there are immigrants doing so much manual labour.

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From: Cheeky work colleague behaving as the Oxford-educated man he is
Sent: Fri 13/02/2009 15:28
Subject: I was wondering

My understanding of the strikes is that a company had hired a foreign third party to build something/provide some service, and the third party had hired predominantly foreign workers to complete the work, which went down badly with the UK employees of the company, resulting in the strike.

I guess in the current climate there is a bit of a "protect your own interests" mentality, although X [our motorhead work colleague] makes a good point about the cost - if foreign workers are cheaper then it's in the company's best interests to use them, especially with the state of the economy as it is.

As far as the statement "British jobs for British workers" - I'm not sure I agree with the idea of discriminating against employing someone based on their nationality. I like to think that if two people are applying for a job then the job should go to the one of them that is best-suited to the requirements. In this case, you could even argue the foreign workers are better suited, since they will speak the same language as their superiors in the foreign third party, come from the same culture etc etc.

However, based on the media reports, there might have been a case of discrimination on the part of the third party (ie they were hiring foreign workers even where they were less suitable). If this is the case (and I don't know anything about the accuracy of the reports) then I can perfectly understand the feelings of the workers and would probably support the strike action - the idea of non-discrimination has to work both ways.

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I have not yet received a reply from our labour-leaning Blackburn work colleague, whose opinion I am very keen to learn.

Love and freedom.