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I actually have no problems with people not wanting to do shit jobs, 0 hour contracts and so on. You just can't have it both ways, blame others for taking them and not work ;)
Is there any more info on your factory working acquaintances? Is there research for that area?
I am sure there are cases where immigration can seem to hurt jobs: But ultimately it's probably a cost cutting exercise, they want rid of the more experienced long term staff and get cheap people. Which happen to be immigrants.
The jobs are there. Your acquaintances could get hired. The bosses are probably LOCALS too. But, they don't get hired. So what's going on?
I've seen some pieces of research that show for lower incomes immigration can cause issues, other say the effect is fairly minimal. It can happen, but I am having big problems with the conversation the way it's held: Name and shame.
It's not solution searching.
We don't even have a pret or an ollies in Belfast, but we have Greg's :P
JWestland-
I haven't seen any particular research for the area. Investment is increasing in the area and hopefully things will improve but a much larger proportion than average of the jobs in the area are unskilled labour.
Unfortunately it's a race to the bottom in terms of pay and working conditions. The root of the problem is the owners of the companies but the cheap, immigrant labour is facilitating it.
I'd agree that tackling immigration isn't tackling the underlying problem but immigration is the visible face of it. Labelling people who complain about immigrants coming over and taking their jobs as racist is ignoring the fact that it is a concern for many people and it is happening.
Oddies is like an East Lancashire Greggs.
aggi
Agreed, that's why I said there are bigger issues at play.
But if any discussion about immigration is shouted down then these things don't come to light.
Just claiming that anecdotally British workers aren't willing to work seems a bit of a lazy generalisation. I know a variety of people who were working in factory jobs and now there is no work available. If that is matched with seeing high percentages of immigrant labour working in factories then, regardless of how much you say that immigration has net benefits for the UK, these people are going to be pissed off.
We don't have a pret, we have an Oddie's if that helps.