Thats just the weather, here one works like mad to keep warm since one is not allowed to actually put coal on the fire, where you are if one does any thing more than a slow stroll one drops dead of heat exhaustion. Maybe thats just me
I'd be willing to take a pay cut. Seriously. The main obstacle is that I do not speak Portugese. I'd have to be pretty fluent to be able to do the job I do. Perhaps one day... Still, for now there's holidays. If I get to visit Madeira I'll let you know!
Nobody would vote for a goverment which promises "fewer jobs for you, more jobs for foreigners!". Gordon Brown himself said British jobs for British workers. Ofcourse Gordon says a lot of things, but can you understand why the strikers are upset? How are they supposed to improve their skills as a workforce when they are out of work (obviously it's not jobs lost in this case, but jobs that could have been gained). The goverment should hold it's promise. That argument is extremely belittling of anyone without a job. In Uganda the minimum wage is equivelent to US$105 a year. Should we all work for that? The Uk has worked for hundreds of years to get to where it has now. That doesn't mean other countries don't have the right to develop, but it won't happen overnight. Bringing down standards in the richer nations isn't the answer. International trade is critical to getting out of the down-turn. Now that our financial industry has collapsed, Britain is quickly running out of exports. Name a high value export of the UK? We might as well be throwing money in the sea if we're exporting jobs too. The UK is very poorly placed for your conceptions of liberated labour markets. Wages are high, and companies are looking to save money. Yet the barriers to entry are lower than a limbo-stick; people just step over the stick, we can only lose out. As burnout said, saying all this makes it very easy to sound like the head of the BNP. I work in a big multi-national engineering company. About half the people in my department aren't from the UK. But we don't bring in people from abroad so we can pay them less, we work with these guys because they're specialists in their field and give us an edge in a global market. I don't want to belittle anyone in the trades, but it doesn't take a PhD, we can train people to do it, and the fact we aren't doing that well enough is a failing of our education and employment strategy.
Or... the workers could get off their asses and get the job training they need. Even if that means working abroad for a while. Capitalism is based on free market competition. Especially during a Credit Crunch, people want cheaper products and services --businesses have to compete on price. This means cutting production costs, which inevitably means cutting wages or cutting jobs. Make no mistake: the drive for production efficiency is what made the industrial West rich: think industrial revolution. Automation and cheap labour; cheap materials and resources. If the labour wasn't cheap enough, there were always slaves and immigrants, else there was outsourcing to developing countries. If materials and resources weren't cheap enough, you just colonised some countries and took theirs. This allowed the West to obtain a decent standard of living: food, housing, health care, education, social welfare. The local population was able to get better educated and apply for the better paid, skilled jobs, earning better wages. They in turn could get their children a better start higher up the ladder. A few generations later everyone was entitled to an education and could even go to University to shoot for the really well-paying careers, or else at least entitle themselves to a social welfare check if they didn't have the brains or the motivation. Meanwhile immigrants came in from the former colonies to do the menial jobs that were now beneath us. Living standards went up. We got soft. We stopped valuing education --it was just something you were made to do. So we are raising generations of de-skilled kids. We stopped seeing direct the connection between working and survival, because we have social welfare and national health. So we are raising generations of lazy kids with an exaggerated sense of overentitlement. But when the immigrants started to overtake the locals in about two generations, we got pissy, partly because they started outcompeting us on the choice jobs and partly because now there was nobody to do our menial work. In come the Eastern European immigrants to pick up the slack. Meanwhile the cost of labour kept creeping up, because we wouldn't, and often couldn't just work for anything, you see; it had to be significantly more than a welfare check (see the "poverty trap" where wage minus taxes ends up being less than unemployment and housing benefits); and there was statutory sick pay and paid annual leave and insurance and health and safety and other such costs for the employers. The price of products and services went up accordingly. So now we earn significantly more than our grandparents, but don't tell them what a pint of milk costs nowadays. Standards of living have gone up, but so have our expectations and sense of entitlement. Hence our wages have been playing catch-up with inflation ever since in a vicious circle. Are you still paying attention? Because here's the important bit. The problem, pistol_pete, is those pesky foreigners again. Like the immigrants they have caught wind of the Western dream and they are going for it wholesale. But they still know the value of education and employment, because they come from poor countries where neither of these things are at all guaranteed. They are also working hard to get their kids up the ladder, and they are now getting more skilled than the de-skilled, lazy consumers that we've been cultivating. And they are still keen. Basically, they are on the upward curve while we have gone over it already. So when profit matters, especially in these tough times, do you as a company go for the relatively unskilled, expensive Brit who throws in the towel at 4 inches of snow, or do you go for the relatively higher skilled, cheaper and definitely keener foreign worker or immigrant who knows that he has not got a welfare check to fall back on? Free market competition. You tell me who is the better deal. And I think I'm telling you nothing new, because you go on to say yourself: Who is not doing it? Not the government. Not the education system. People aren't doing it. They're not sending their children to school. They're not teaching them discipline and the value of education. They're not teaching them the value of hard work. They're teaching them to be self-centered junkfood eating, Sky TV watching, smoking, boozing consumers. They moan when they have to go abroad for a job. They moan when they have to get through four inches of snow to get to work. People got soft. They feel entitled to a standard of living that most people in other parts of the world can only dream about, would do anything to just get a taste of. We got too comfortable in the self-perceived superiority over all other countries borne from our colonial legacy. Well listen up: it's a global market now, and it's based on competition. We made it that way and we thought it was the best system ever when it worked in our favour. We can't start complaining now if the Third World countries we exploited suddenly have become better players at the game.
Thank god someone is now seeing it from my point of view. I could teach 5 people in an afternoon how to lay a corse of bricks to a standard that would make a professional bricky smile. I am a designer by trade, but im tighter than a nats wallet, so i always look into and question 'can i do it myself' and in the end i have peace of mind that the job has been done to spec if not a tad over spec... lol! Seriously those chaps bought in for the oil refinery could have easily been found in the UK for the same price if anyone took the time to look. A month of notice boards and getting the word out and hunderds if not thousands of men even women would have made contact about it, then the work would be inspected the same as the EU workers work would be. Britain gave the world the humble ford transit for builders and pikeys alike, it wouldn't be right seeing someone from outside of the UK driving a transit leaning out the window swearing and tailgating the car in front unless they were british! Imagin that in albanian, not the same is it. ROFL! Right now i sound like i am running the BNP, so lets go shout at some french people and slap them with are passports, WERE BRITISH DAM IT! IT'S ARE RIGHT TO MOAN AND STRIKE, is the tea on?
For lower wages? The low-medium skilled workers who are losing their jobs in the UK can't afford to move abroad, and cant support their family in the UK on lower wages. And do you honestly believe that a British worker abroad applying for hotly contested jobs in an eastern Europe country would get the same opportunities as vice versa? Put your liberal views aside, because they don't give a ****. It's not about complaining - a very British thing to do. Every single person who currently works in the UK could be replaced by someone who will do it for less money. This isn't capitalism, it's global socialism. The workers who are striking believe that their jobs, their livelihoods, and their family's future is under threat and feel they can do nothing about it because of EU rules. Do you really think they're wrong to protest about it? Do they deserve jobs in their own country? Of course they do, that's what they've voted governments to do, that's what their parents have worked for, and it's the values and hard work of the people of the UK that have allowed the companies based here to succeed.
Doesn't work like that. Advertising costs time and money. Interviewing the workers costs time and money. Training them up to an acceptable standard costs time and money. And then there is no guarantee whatsoever that they will do a decent job. And in the oil industry, failure to meet standards costs a lot of money. On the other hand there is the Italian Job: a team of skilled employees who are used to working together and have a well-established reputation for doing the job right, for the right price, right there. You have budgets and deadlines; you need to get the job done right now, right first time. What are you going to do? Exactly. Why can't you get this through your head? THIS IS FREE MARKET COMPETITION. A bid was put out to tender and the Italian company was the best candidate for the job. The Brits better take a long hard look at themselves and ask why they were not, and get in shape for the next time. Put it this way: you are in hospital for complex surgery. You have a choice of two surgeons: one is Italian, highly skilled in this procedure, with an established track record of successful operations. The other is British born and bred, but he has had no previous experience in this particular procedure, and no track record. He'll have to learn on the job, so to speak. Who do you want to operate on you? Are you feeling nationalistic yet?
I dont know how he dose it really, he usually posts an article on the matter. Its hard to debate against him as he usually finds an angle of attack you cant help but agree with in some form or another. Usually when a topic gets out of hand i sit back and wait for the nexxo slap, which straightens it all out! Thats why he is so loved and a GOD , MOD
Nexxo i understand why the company has hired the way they have, dont get me wrong i do understand. And maybe the oil refinery is a bad example. I think the discusion has moved on to the general industry and the way it works. I personally hate the capitalist way. Actually i dont think i agree with any as i see problems in them all, because a human trate is crouption, we all want a bigger slice of the cake and no matter what is put in place were still faced with it. Oh and the whole operation surgery question thats serious skilled labour god dam life and death crap, its not the same as laying paving slabs, because you can teach and monkey to lay paving slabs.
British construction workers have been going abroad to (then Western) Germany, Spain, Italy, France for years, and earned very well doing so thank you very much. That's socialism. The UK chose capitalism. Shares may go down as well as up.
The problem isn't in the high-skills sector, I've already stated the UK needs to take the best available from the international skills market to remain competitive in high tech and high skills industries. During this recession, it's the many medium and low skilled workers who are being laid off. 2 million are now unemployed, each of which cost the UK money. Bringing in a ship load of Italian and Portuguese workers, who contribute nothing to our economy while they are here, doesn't help that. Nor does it show any sign of confidence in UK workers, which can only be a downward spiral towards the destruction of skills and the loss another sector of work. Do you really think nobody in the UK has ever built part of a refinery before? During this recession, workers need that vote of confidence in their abilities; to them, contracting foreign workers is an utter insult. People in the refineries and power stations are striking because they feel if they don't urge for change, soon their own jobs could be replaced. Total obviously aren't legally obliged to employ local workers, but in not doing so they've missed the opportunity to provide skilled work. Do the locals need the work more than the Italians and Portuguese? Well Nexxo apparently not, as British welfare will simply support them instead and everyone will live happily ever after. A corporation is more than one person at the top trying to make himself money. Successful companies need people to give more than just their time for a fixed wage. The hard work, the ideas and innovations, and the skills of every person who has been part of the company have contributed. Some people - perhaps not yourself (but don't feel bad about that ) - feel attachment to greater things, like the company they work for, or their country, and no amount of holier-than-thou "free market!" will break that. Do I support the strikes? Yes, I would do the same if I was in their position. And that's all I have to say about that. Because I want to go play GRID.
+1 Those salty sea dogs on there ship hotel wont be paying any tax and there is going to be at least one trip to A+E whilst there here, well its hard to explain. My father contracted in holland for a while and was taxed by the dutch, but later managed to claim it all back.
if you want foreign workers out of your jobs then it is fair that i also demand that all foreign workers get out of my jobs, and go home... right? are you ready for a tsunami of UK workers that are currently working in other countries? as for not paying taxes... what about VAT? or road tax when they get fuel? what about taxes that come from when they pay for a service? by the way, what is a standard monthly salary for a worker around there? what about the minimum wage?
Ask Lindsey Refinery --they are better judges of that than either of us. Don't you think that hiring suitable locals would have been the easier option, had they been available? But they weren't. Ask yourself why. Utter bull. I refer you again to the previous question: you are in hospital for complex surgery. You have a choice of two surgeons: one is Italian, highly skilled in this procedure, with an established track record of successful operations. The other is British born and bred, but he has had no previous experience in this particular procedure, and no track record. He'll have to learn on the job, so to speak. Who do you want to operate on you? How's that attachment to nationalist principles now? Now before you say: "Yeah but that's different, that's life and death", consider that building a friggin' oil refinery is not like laying paving slabs. It is SFPD stuff: systems fail, people die. What the British workers need to do is show some of that ability and skill and hard work. Get training and make sure that they outcompete the Italians at the next bid. Instead they go on wildcat strikes --not exactly a vote of confidence to me. People will not work hard and excel if they feel that their jobs are protected no matter what (I mean, ever work for the council? It is a bastion of mediocrity for that reason). They get lazy and complacent. Competition is what drives people to excel, not jobs secured on nationalist entitlement.
Sorry, I thought made that obvious. Of course I'd take the Italian surgeon. That's a cheap dig to question nationalist principles, if it's something you don't believe in then suit yourself, but to use it to look good in an argument is like taking a dig at someone's religion. And the UK doesn't have that capability? Where did the existing refineries come from? We can build nuclear submarines in the UK ffs. If it's high skill work it's even more valuable to us. I don't have an issue with migrant workers on the whole, I've already said I work in a large global company and many of my co-workers are from Europe, the US and Asia. This announcement however comes at a sensitive time and doesn't show much respect for the oil refinery workers - hence, they are striking.
We do have the capability, there were 5 British firms bid for the tender, what we DO NOT know is why they were not taken. We assume the Italians were cheaper but in this industry the obvious cheaper options is not always taken. The Italian firm may have had more experience with this technology, a Hydrotreater is not just a big drum with a fire at the bottom and some pipes at the top, thus leading to less delays or errors. The Italian firm may have been less busy and been able to start immediately thus saving money down the line with less hold ups, the list goes on, hell the Italians may just have been better! We assume through our own national pride that we are the greatest most expensive workers in the world. Double standards you don't mind that your firm can take foreign workers but Total can't. Total the French oil firm by the way. Should they go home also do we nationalise every thing, National emergency the credit crisis is.
Steve_mcg i agree that we dont know the whole story on the matter, with the fact that maybe all the other british contractors currently booked up for the next year or so. At no point has anyone said foreign companies dont belong here, your just getting it all wrong. The whole arguement is over why 'if britian has a surplus of X number of labours' and the goverenment said 'british jobs for british workers' when why hire else where from the EU. And before this thread starts to sound like a jamed record, I note Cost reliability of a work force that worked together with good standards. Nexxo i dont want you to be offended in anyway, but your coming at this whole debate as a foreign worker yourself, but your advantage is that your in a higher skilled job, in which i dont think we have a massive surplus of. Building sites and developments have been shutting down across the whole of the UK, there being moth balled as we speak until the property market starts to brighten up because there isn't a point in finishing a new house if no one is going to buy them. Because of this all the skilled labour is now unemployeed or on reduced hours just ticking over. And this is what has sparked the strikes. All these builders looking forward to a bleak future of unemployment sitting at home with a thumb up there arse, suddenly hear of a massive project underway only to hear its being farmed out to the EU. Im not saying the EU workers aren't struggling like us to find work. But when its just down the road from you a matter of 30 miles compared the hunderds of miles the EU workers have got to travel. Wouldn't you agree that its feels like a kick in the teeth.
Ehh, the house prices are so high that the people building them can't afford them, so really, if house prices start going up again, it won't solve anything, it would be better if they would fall by like 90%, that way people could actually afford a home again, it would leave them with more money to spend, and we all know, ever increasing spending is a requirement for economic growth which in theory allows for more jobs (of course, they will still cut jobs and make the remaining people work harder instead of creating new jobs, but thats not really the topic here).
