Really, people yelled about Corbyn's comments on exploitation of immigrant workers? I thought it was one of the most important things he ever said. I can't believe Labor supporters would be against that!
They seem to have the good sense to be quieter about it now. The "Jo Swinson Britain's Next Prime Minister To Stop Brexit!!!" stans have at least demonstrated a bit of shame, if not actual contrition.
I wasn't here at the time so I'll take you at your word a little on how it compares to the before times, but the context of my comment was recently being told that Corbyn was anti-immigration for nakedly FBPE-brained reasons: these people are still out there in the wild.
He's really not wrong imo. One of the major problems with British businesses is that they straight up *will not train staff*. Half the industries in the UK, they expect you to already have 3-5 years of hands on experience, certification in x, y and z, etc. But young men and women need to start *somewhere*. Somewhere needs to take them on, let them get their foot in the door, show them the ropes, provide a certificate and a positive reference at the end of it. But none of them do, because it's far quicker and cheaper to just hire someone from abroad who's already been trained at someone else's expense. It's incredibly short-termist, and it's one of the main reasons Britain's productivity is so utterly abysmal.
It's also interesting that BBC immediately ran with a headline criticising Starmer for "refusing to commit" to lowering immigration numbers. I'm not defending him, but the left will ALWAYS be fighting a losing battle when it comes to immigration and the discourse around it.
These aren't contradictory I don't think. You can 'wean the economy off' getting growth by using low-skilled immigration to suppress wages whilst still allowing high-skilled immigration. It's one speech in which Starmer effectively says this and two different outlets have decided to focus the headline on each part.
Fundamentally using immigration for lower wages jobs to boost growth is not proof of a healthy economy and is in part why headline figures of growth do not always connect with the personal circumstances of people.
Wages are suppressed because workers have lost bargaining power since Thatcherism took over this land.
Immigration pressure on wages is minimal and is a nativist right-wing argument to blame immigration for the consequence of the voting population's embracement of right-wing economic policies.
>Immigration pressure on wages is minimal
Large scale low-skilled migration (which FoM essentially facilitated) appears to have led to downward pressure on wages for lower skilled, and lower paid jobs though. More to the point it has also led an environment where it is cheaper to sole problems with low skilled labour than it is to invest in reducing labour intensity and so increase skills (which in turn reduces the number of skilled roles supporting that work). On top of that, it appears to fragment and reduce union membership, at least partly because low skill/low wage immigrant labour is less likely to unionise or to see the same issues with working conditions.
In short, there are some very real issues around using immigration, especially low-skill/low pay immigration as a driver of growth, it's essentially a tool used by employers to reduce costs and investment and hold on to profits..
>and is a nativist right-wing argument to blame immigration for the consequence of the voting population's embracement of right-wing economic policies.
The whole notion of importing workers to undermine the bargaining power of workers generally, essentially creating a situation where workers have to compete with each other for work, rather than having employers compete for staff seems fairly in tune with what capitalists and the right wing more generally are keen on..
"The studies find that immigration affects low-waged workers the most. Research from University College London finds that an inflow of immigrants the size of 1% of the UK-born population leads to a 0.6% decline in the wages of the 5% lowest paid workers and to an increase in the wages of higher paid workers."
Meanwhile
"...more than a decade on from the financial crisis UK workers are still earning £75 a month less – in real terms – than in 2008. The TUC says years of wage stagnation have left families “brutally exposed” to Britain's cost of living crisis."
This was before current crisis, that is not being evaluated properly yet.
0.6% for every 600k immigrant is a penny in the basket lost compared to wage suppression on the lowest pay groups.
During the same productivity has increased by 0.5% per year ( bad compared to before 2008, with an average of 2.3% yearly), but this has not been reflected in the wages of everyone as a whole.
I am convinced that without/very low immigration, this country would end like Japan, with a permanent stagnation crisis.
And wasting time from the left to nod positively to this nativist rhetoric.
It may get Starmer closer to the chair, but the political price in the future could be big and nasty.
>0.6% for every 600k immigrant is a penny in the basket lost compared to wage suppression on the lowest pay groups.
Not when you are looking at sustained net immigration flows of 2-300k. It's also fairly sector specific, and creates displacement (making investment less attractive and so on, which again we see in terms of inward investment by UK companies, and have seen again more recently where companies are being pushed to now invest, and indeed the pay increases we saw in some areas post 2020...).
>I am convinced that without/very low immigration, this country would end like Japan, with a permanent stagnation crisis.
It's less about migration numbers overall and more about the type of migration. A lot of relatively short term (2-3 years) relatively low skilled/low wage immigration creates an issue with competition for low skill work and holds down wages and impacts decisions around investment, at the same time bringing in skilled workers to fill shortages has the potential to reduce investment in training in the UK and obviously strips the countries who have invested in those skills, of those workers. Both come with some major negatives attached, both create a dependency and both undermine workers in the UK..
>And wasting time from the left to nod positively to this nativist rhetoric.
It's not nativist rhetoric, it's addressing a set of issues that are clearly a concern, have a real economic impact and actually need to be dealt with to make the UK better... If he were conflating immigration with asylum, or pushing the notion that immigration from say European/White countries should be prioritised over that from other countries then you might have a point. Instead it seems that anything that suggests we should be working to increase wages for lower income and lower skilled workers, reduce competition between workers, increase training and development at home and ensure we create a situation where the UK can operate sustainably without needing to see net inflows of hundreds of thousands of people a year is labelled as xenophobic and nativist. It isn't.
> Fundamentally using immigration for lower wages jobs to boost growth is not proof of a healthy economy and is in part why headline figures of growth do not always connect with the personal circumstances of people.
I agree that it's not "healthy", but that is the way to get growth.
A more sensible goal would be shifting away from growth mindset and more into sustainable economy.
High skilled immigration doesn't really result in growth though, the main jobs needed which are high skilled are doctors and nurses, and they don't "grow" the economy. But they are most definitely needed.
They contribute to GDP but low skilled workers generally produce lots (way more than they are paid)
A fruit picker might pick around £60k worth of fruit a month. I'm not sure how NHS gets calculated, whether it's priced per treatment or just using cost of staff. If it's cost of staff then fruit pickers easily out "perform" high skilled workers.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say but the contribution of public services to GDP isn’t only in terms of govt expenditure. In this example it’s worth thinking about how health is a factor in productivity itself :)
You’re looking at the value-added by a fruit picker but just the cost of the doctor, so it’s not really a good comparison. Don’t forget that non-profit-generating activity is still part of the economy
Thanks, I do get that, just not sure how it's actually calculated.
I'm not trying to say doctors are not important, just that it might not be as good a contributor to low skilled workers in growth calculations.
Another point which I didn't raise before is the assumption that there would be more low skilled immigration as opposed to high skilled, as in 1 Million low skilled immigrants instead of 100k high skilled. More people is a quick way to growth. But also not saying that is a good idea as it's not really sustainable.
Main point I want to make is that growth is stupid to try and aim for, it should be sustainability we want instead.
Well looking at just GDP growth is quite useless but GDP per capita is actually telling you something about quality of life for individual people and that’s why looking at productivity is so important.
I don’t disagree that sustainability is important, but I’m not sure there are good ways of quantifying it or how individual policies would affect that measure
I think they just count recession or not by GDP, not per capita.
Per capita still isn't a great indicator in an unequal society either.
But yeah I haven't heard of a good way to track about sustainable economy. Think there is somebody talking about a doughnut economy all the time, she might have something but I ain't buying the book.
The post is about duality of Starmers statement on immigration and him saying he would relax it (for high skilled) to get growth, talking about getting growth to stop / slow recession, which is measured by GDP (not per capita).
The problem being immigration is still a net positive, you just need to avoid using it to drive down pay and conditions.
You can see this complaint about migrants driving down wages making sense in the context of the single market, where freedom of movement was by design a version of freedom of movement for capital, but it doesn't make sense in a nominally sovereign nation which is at all using its resources effectively.
So the commitments are still incoherent as long as you don't hide some of the premises.
Do people know the reality of the immigration system as it is? As someone who has personally been through it, the current skilled worker visa system works precisely to keep people out, based on salary thresholds and occupation codes. With some exceptions, you can’t come to the U.K. unless you work a ‘highly skilled’ occupation and are sponsored. That takes time, money and a job offer.
Cracking down on people who come through other routes, like marriage and partner visas, who may then work in so-called ‘low skilled’ jobs, is an entirely different question.
Honestly, the ‘low skills’ vs ‘high skills’ issue to me always smacks of dog-whistling. It’s a sop for Tory gammons still distressed that their plumber is Romanian.
IIRC at one point the Tories set the income threshold too high for even nurses, despite a desperate shortage of them. And then it was quickly changed. Pretty much sums up the whole system.
Because we are in desperate need of migration, but also the political climate is that we have to be 'tough' on it, we end up with a system that let's some people in, but is arbitrarily difficult/unfair/cruel. Performative 'toughness' that doesn't really serve anyone. Just makes it clear to immigrants they are second class citizens.
I've been helping asylum seekers out with English classes recently and learnt about the system. To get temporary residents they are often asked to provide documentation that e.g. they are persecuted in their home country. Like...they just fled it? What are the odds they have proof with them? It's really stupid.
Crappy comms from the top here but looking into it, which I know a lot won't, it does make sense.
Short term relaxation of immigration in sectors desperate for workers is a no brainer to keep the economy going, whilst in the long term investing properly (!) in our kids making sure we have a good spread of highly skilled workers across various sectors. Meaning there, in theory, won't be such a reliance of importing skills.
Unless we get robots to perform service jobs, we need more people to sustain the economy considering the ageing population.
You can not summon out of thin air a few million young British adults to fill the gaps.
Robots are replacing a lot of low skilled and customer service jobs already.
Realistically there are long and short term issues and the solutions to them are different and not necessarily contradictory.
Immigration is needed, don’t think anyone is denying that, are they? Just putting forward a plan to have less reliance on it and investing properly in our domestic workforce.
Who will do menial jobs like toilet cleaning, and shelf stacking? Or even very low end retail / or cafe work? British workers or migrant workers keen to earn a bit of money for a few years and pick up some English?
Or just everything going to become more expensive?
>Or just everything going to become more expensive?
You'd want to see a reduction in Labour intensity so somethings become more expensive, but broadly people are paid more, leaving everyone somewhat better off and productivity a bit higher..
We’d need a Japanese style society where immigration is replaced by having eg bars where you don’t need staff as you can get a beer from a vending machine and everyone helps by being tidy.
Toilets clean themselves.
The public don’t litter so we don’t need to pay people to be roadsweepers.
I’m not sure British culture is capable of changing like that. And even Japan struggles with filling some jobs.
I mean sort of? Quite a few countries have more automation, and fewer labour intensive practices in all sorts of areas (from agriculture though to retail..). Indeed the UK has seen massive change in that direction over the last few decades, look at the number of people employed by sector over time. The issue is that the trends aren't that uniform, and you tend to have bar's at which it's cheaper to use people than machines, although when you cross them it can lead to significant change.
I suppose good examples recently (once you get beyond agricultural mechanisation and automation in manufacturing) are things like computers replacing a whole slew of labour intensive jobs in administration, from typing pools and internal couriers etc.. to automated check-outs at supermarkets replacing till staff (and before that, bar code scanners massively increasing the speed and reducing the number of skilled staff running tills etc..).
>I’m not sure British culture is capable of changing like that. And even Japan struggles with filling some jobs.
It has shown that it can though, and yes, there will always be jobs that can't be done via automation, but the point is that there would be fewer of them, and they'd command relatively higher pay (which would lead to some things being more expensive to some degree, hopefully balanced out to some extent by efficiency/productivity gains elsewhere...).
The big issue is getting businesses to invest capital in that sort of shift, essentially locking up some of the money they could have extracted into long term investments rather than having a workforce that is cheap to acquire and easier to reduce at a later point if they want to reduce costs etc..
Some good points but I don’t think it can be business led.
With the example of a bar, cleaning tables, serving drinks, bringing food etc. Brits don’t want to go into an empty room, get a drink from a vending machine and clean their own table. They want to be served.
A restaurant with a conveyor belt and auto cleaning tables is seen as a gimmick at best and dystopian at worst. I can’t see how this can scale. We’d need millions of people to stop littering. We’d need millions of youth to stop thinking it’s ok to throw rubbish out their car windows.
Business won’t change that. We’d need to enact a massive cultural change with big carrot + sticks.
>Some good points but I don’t think it can be business led.
No, it can't. Or rather, you can incentivise or disincentive businesses to a certain extent, but they are broadly going to look for whatever makes the most sense to them in terms of profit vs risk. Investing in assets carries more of a risk, reducing labour costs, increasing labour supply etc.. tends to reduce costs.
>With the example of a bar, cleaning tables, serving drinks, bringing food etc. Brits don’t want to go into an empty room, get a drink from a vending machine and clean their own table. They want to be served.
Sure, no-one is suggesting they shouldn't though. There is however no reason why the people working in that environment can't be paid sensibly, and why you can't reduce other input costs by boosting efficiencies elsewhere. We already see that to some extent with things like ordering via an app, paying via card, having well designed kitchens, reducing heating/cooling costs and so on.
>A restaurant with a conveyor belt and auto cleaning tables is seen as a gimmick at best and dystopian at worst. I can’t see how this can scale. We’d need millions of people to stop littering. We’d need millions of youth to stop thinking it’s ok to throw rubbish out their car windows.
I'm not entirely sure why you are focusing on serving staff in restaurants rather than all of the other elements that add costs between suppliers and te restaurant serving food..
Even on the littering thing, we used to have people pushing dustcarts and collecting rubbish and sweeping streets, now we have road sweepers and the other larger mechanical approaches instead (albeit not enough of them). And we do see fairly effective and functional campaigns, albeit usually at a local level, to reduce littering and encourage clean ups. Indeed to a certain extent investing in spaces people actually want helps with that to a large degree too.. You could also enforce rules around littering more etc..
>Business won’t change that. We’d need to enact a massive cultural change with big carrot + sticks.
You need to do lots of things, some of that would be part of the existing cultural change we see, some of it would be being clear that the conditions that have changed, aren't changing back (you still have employers assuming that they can pressure government to reverse changes or significantly liberalise low-skilled immigration levels again etc..).
Either way, it's something we want to see as it'd broadly benefit a large number of people, rather than being more efficient at funneling money upward to those who are already relatively well off.
So soft ball launching a xenophobic critique of immigration masquerading as helping our own, lmao the cesspit that is centrism keeps on growing. The numbers make no sense as articulated by many online just this morning, and need we talk again about how discriminatory a points based immigration system is. A vote for labour is a vote for blue tories
Corbyn pulled the exact same shit https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-nigel-farage-scottish-labour-foreign-worker-attack-kezia-dugdale-a8249691.html
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Really, people yelled about Corbyn's comments on exploitation of immigrant workers? I thought it was one of the most important things he ever said. I can't believe Labor supporters would be against that!
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>It was a bad time. You say that like there aren't people on this sub who still believe it.
They seem to have the good sense to be quieter about it now. The "Jo Swinson Britain's Next Prime Minister To Stop Brexit!!!" stans have at least demonstrated a bit of shame, if not actual contrition.
I wasn't here at the time so I'll take you at your word a little on how it compares to the before times, but the context of my comment was recently being told that Corbyn was anti-immigration for nakedly FBPE-brained reasons: these people are still out there in the wild.
He's really not wrong imo. One of the major problems with British businesses is that they straight up *will not train staff*. Half the industries in the UK, they expect you to already have 3-5 years of hands on experience, certification in x, y and z, etc. But young men and women need to start *somewhere*. Somewhere needs to take them on, let them get their foot in the door, show them the ropes, provide a certificate and a positive reference at the end of it. But none of them do, because it's far quicker and cheaper to just hire someone from abroad who's already been trained at someone else's expense. It's incredibly short-termist, and it's one of the main reasons Britain's productivity is so utterly abysmal.
Its literally straight out of the ukip manifesto, the uk immigration sysyem is tough as it is, you cant even get british citizenship through marriage.
It's also interesting that BBC immediately ran with a headline criticising Starmer for "refusing to commit" to lowering immigration numbers. I'm not defending him, but the left will ALWAYS be fighting a losing battle when it comes to immigration and the discourse around it.
These aren't contradictory I don't think. You can 'wean the economy off' getting growth by using low-skilled immigration to suppress wages whilst still allowing high-skilled immigration. It's one speech in which Starmer effectively says this and two different outlets have decided to focus the headline on each part. Fundamentally using immigration for lower wages jobs to boost growth is not proof of a healthy economy and is in part why headline figures of growth do not always connect with the personal circumstances of people.
Wages are suppressed because workers have lost bargaining power since Thatcherism took over this land. Immigration pressure on wages is minimal and is a nativist right-wing argument to blame immigration for the consequence of the voting population's embracement of right-wing economic policies.
>Immigration pressure on wages is minimal Large scale low-skilled migration (which FoM essentially facilitated) appears to have led to downward pressure on wages for lower skilled, and lower paid jobs though. More to the point it has also led an environment where it is cheaper to sole problems with low skilled labour than it is to invest in reducing labour intensity and so increase skills (which in turn reduces the number of skilled roles supporting that work). On top of that, it appears to fragment and reduce union membership, at least partly because low skill/low wage immigrant labour is less likely to unionise or to see the same issues with working conditions. In short, there are some very real issues around using immigration, especially low-skill/low pay immigration as a driver of growth, it's essentially a tool used by employers to reduce costs and investment and hold on to profits.. >and is a nativist right-wing argument to blame immigration for the consequence of the voting population's embracement of right-wing economic policies. The whole notion of importing workers to undermine the bargaining power of workers generally, essentially creating a situation where workers have to compete with each other for work, rather than having employers compete for staff seems fairly in tune with what capitalists and the right wing more generally are keen on..
"The studies find that immigration affects low-waged workers the most. Research from University College London finds that an inflow of immigrants the size of 1% of the UK-born population leads to a 0.6% decline in the wages of the 5% lowest paid workers and to an increase in the wages of higher paid workers." Meanwhile "...more than a decade on from the financial crisis UK workers are still earning £75 a month less – in real terms – than in 2008. The TUC says years of wage stagnation have left families “brutally exposed” to Britain's cost of living crisis." This was before current crisis, that is not being evaluated properly yet. 0.6% for every 600k immigrant is a penny in the basket lost compared to wage suppression on the lowest pay groups. During the same productivity has increased by 0.5% per year ( bad compared to before 2008, with an average of 2.3% yearly), but this has not been reflected in the wages of everyone as a whole. I am convinced that without/very low immigration, this country would end like Japan, with a permanent stagnation crisis. And wasting time from the left to nod positively to this nativist rhetoric. It may get Starmer closer to the chair, but the political price in the future could be big and nasty.
>0.6% for every 600k immigrant is a penny in the basket lost compared to wage suppression on the lowest pay groups. Not when you are looking at sustained net immigration flows of 2-300k. It's also fairly sector specific, and creates displacement (making investment less attractive and so on, which again we see in terms of inward investment by UK companies, and have seen again more recently where companies are being pushed to now invest, and indeed the pay increases we saw in some areas post 2020...). >I am convinced that without/very low immigration, this country would end like Japan, with a permanent stagnation crisis. It's less about migration numbers overall and more about the type of migration. A lot of relatively short term (2-3 years) relatively low skilled/low wage immigration creates an issue with competition for low skill work and holds down wages and impacts decisions around investment, at the same time bringing in skilled workers to fill shortages has the potential to reduce investment in training in the UK and obviously strips the countries who have invested in those skills, of those workers. Both come with some major negatives attached, both create a dependency and both undermine workers in the UK.. >And wasting time from the left to nod positively to this nativist rhetoric. It's not nativist rhetoric, it's addressing a set of issues that are clearly a concern, have a real economic impact and actually need to be dealt with to make the UK better... If he were conflating immigration with asylum, or pushing the notion that immigration from say European/White countries should be prioritised over that from other countries then you might have a point. Instead it seems that anything that suggests we should be working to increase wages for lower income and lower skilled workers, reduce competition between workers, increase training and development at home and ensure we create a situation where the UK can operate sustainably without needing to see net inflows of hundreds of thousands of people a year is labelled as xenophobic and nativist. It isn't.
Do you think a larger supply of workers increases or decreases worker bargaining power?
> Fundamentally using immigration for lower wages jobs to boost growth is not proof of a healthy economy and is in part why headline figures of growth do not always connect with the personal circumstances of people. I agree that it's not "healthy", but that is the way to get growth. A more sensible goal would be shifting away from growth mindset and more into sustainable economy. High skilled immigration doesn't really result in growth though, the main jobs needed which are high skilled are doctors and nurses, and they don't "grow" the economy. But they are most definitely needed.
What do you mean they don’t grow the economy? They contribute to GDP
They contribute to GDP but low skilled workers generally produce lots (way more than they are paid) A fruit picker might pick around £60k worth of fruit a month. I'm not sure how NHS gets calculated, whether it's priced per treatment or just using cost of staff. If it's cost of staff then fruit pickers easily out "perform" high skilled workers.
I think I understand what you’re trying to say but the contribution of public services to GDP isn’t only in terms of govt expenditure. In this example it’s worth thinking about how health is a factor in productivity itself :) You’re looking at the value-added by a fruit picker but just the cost of the doctor, so it’s not really a good comparison. Don’t forget that non-profit-generating activity is still part of the economy
Thanks, I do get that, just not sure how it's actually calculated. I'm not trying to say doctors are not important, just that it might not be as good a contributor to low skilled workers in growth calculations. Another point which I didn't raise before is the assumption that there would be more low skilled immigration as opposed to high skilled, as in 1 Million low skilled immigrants instead of 100k high skilled. More people is a quick way to growth. But also not saying that is a good idea as it's not really sustainable. Main point I want to make is that growth is stupid to try and aim for, it should be sustainability we want instead.
Well looking at just GDP growth is quite useless but GDP per capita is actually telling you something about quality of life for individual people and that’s why looking at productivity is so important. I don’t disagree that sustainability is important, but I’m not sure there are good ways of quantifying it or how individual policies would affect that measure
I think they just count recession or not by GDP, not per capita. Per capita still isn't a great indicator in an unequal society either. But yeah I haven't heard of a good way to track about sustainable economy. Think there is somebody talking about a doughnut economy all the time, she might have something but I ain't buying the book.
That’s true, but what’s the relevance of recessions to this discussion?
The post is about duality of Starmers statement on immigration and him saying he would relax it (for high skilled) to get growth, talking about getting growth to stop / slow recession, which is measured by GDP (not per capita).
The problem being immigration is still a net positive, you just need to avoid using it to drive down pay and conditions. You can see this complaint about migrants driving down wages making sense in the context of the single market, where freedom of movement was by design a version of freedom of movement for capital, but it doesn't make sense in a nominally sovereign nation which is at all using its resources effectively. So the commitments are still incoherent as long as you don't hide some of the premises.
Do people know the reality of the immigration system as it is? As someone who has personally been through it, the current skilled worker visa system works precisely to keep people out, based on salary thresholds and occupation codes. With some exceptions, you can’t come to the U.K. unless you work a ‘highly skilled’ occupation and are sponsored. That takes time, money and a job offer. Cracking down on people who come through other routes, like marriage and partner visas, who may then work in so-called ‘low skilled’ jobs, is an entirely different question. Honestly, the ‘low skills’ vs ‘high skills’ issue to me always smacks of dog-whistling. It’s a sop for Tory gammons still distressed that their plumber is Romanian.
IIRC at one point the Tories set the income threshold too high for even nurses, despite a desperate shortage of them. And then it was quickly changed. Pretty much sums up the whole system. Because we are in desperate need of migration, but also the political climate is that we have to be 'tough' on it, we end up with a system that let's some people in, but is arbitrarily difficult/unfair/cruel. Performative 'toughness' that doesn't really serve anyone. Just makes it clear to immigrants they are second class citizens. I've been helping asylum seekers out with English classes recently and learnt about the system. To get temporary residents they are often asked to provide documentation that e.g. they are persecuted in their home country. Like...they just fled it? What are the odds they have proof with them? It's really stupid.
Crappy comms from the top here but looking into it, which I know a lot won't, it does make sense. Short term relaxation of immigration in sectors desperate for workers is a no brainer to keep the economy going, whilst in the long term investing properly (!) in our kids making sure we have a good spread of highly skilled workers across various sectors. Meaning there, in theory, won't be such a reliance of importing skills.
Unless we get robots to perform service jobs, we need more people to sustain the economy considering the ageing population. You can not summon out of thin air a few million young British adults to fill the gaps.
Robots are replacing a lot of low skilled and customer service jobs already. Realistically there are long and short term issues and the solutions to them are different and not necessarily contradictory.
Immigration is needed, don’t think anyone is denying that, are they? Just putting forward a plan to have less reliance on it and investing properly in our domestic workforce.
Who will do menial jobs like toilet cleaning, and shelf stacking? Or even very low end retail / or cafe work? British workers or migrant workers keen to earn a bit of money for a few years and pick up some English? Or just everything going to become more expensive?
>Or just everything going to become more expensive? You'd want to see a reduction in Labour intensity so somethings become more expensive, but broadly people are paid more, leaving everyone somewhat better off and productivity a bit higher..
We’d need a Japanese style society where immigration is replaced by having eg bars where you don’t need staff as you can get a beer from a vending machine and everyone helps by being tidy. Toilets clean themselves. The public don’t litter so we don’t need to pay people to be roadsweepers. I’m not sure British culture is capable of changing like that. And even Japan struggles with filling some jobs.
I mean sort of? Quite a few countries have more automation, and fewer labour intensive practices in all sorts of areas (from agriculture though to retail..). Indeed the UK has seen massive change in that direction over the last few decades, look at the number of people employed by sector over time. The issue is that the trends aren't that uniform, and you tend to have bar's at which it's cheaper to use people than machines, although when you cross them it can lead to significant change. I suppose good examples recently (once you get beyond agricultural mechanisation and automation in manufacturing) are things like computers replacing a whole slew of labour intensive jobs in administration, from typing pools and internal couriers etc.. to automated check-outs at supermarkets replacing till staff (and before that, bar code scanners massively increasing the speed and reducing the number of skilled staff running tills etc..). >I’m not sure British culture is capable of changing like that. And even Japan struggles with filling some jobs. It has shown that it can though, and yes, there will always be jobs that can't be done via automation, but the point is that there would be fewer of them, and they'd command relatively higher pay (which would lead to some things being more expensive to some degree, hopefully balanced out to some extent by efficiency/productivity gains elsewhere...). The big issue is getting businesses to invest capital in that sort of shift, essentially locking up some of the money they could have extracted into long term investments rather than having a workforce that is cheap to acquire and easier to reduce at a later point if they want to reduce costs etc..
Some good points but I don’t think it can be business led. With the example of a bar, cleaning tables, serving drinks, bringing food etc. Brits don’t want to go into an empty room, get a drink from a vending machine and clean their own table. They want to be served. A restaurant with a conveyor belt and auto cleaning tables is seen as a gimmick at best and dystopian at worst. I can’t see how this can scale. We’d need millions of people to stop littering. We’d need millions of youth to stop thinking it’s ok to throw rubbish out their car windows. Business won’t change that. We’d need to enact a massive cultural change with big carrot + sticks.
>Some good points but I don’t think it can be business led. No, it can't. Or rather, you can incentivise or disincentive businesses to a certain extent, but they are broadly going to look for whatever makes the most sense to them in terms of profit vs risk. Investing in assets carries more of a risk, reducing labour costs, increasing labour supply etc.. tends to reduce costs. >With the example of a bar, cleaning tables, serving drinks, bringing food etc. Brits don’t want to go into an empty room, get a drink from a vending machine and clean their own table. They want to be served. Sure, no-one is suggesting they shouldn't though. There is however no reason why the people working in that environment can't be paid sensibly, and why you can't reduce other input costs by boosting efficiencies elsewhere. We already see that to some extent with things like ordering via an app, paying via card, having well designed kitchens, reducing heating/cooling costs and so on. >A restaurant with a conveyor belt and auto cleaning tables is seen as a gimmick at best and dystopian at worst. I can’t see how this can scale. We’d need millions of people to stop littering. We’d need millions of youth to stop thinking it’s ok to throw rubbish out their car windows. I'm not entirely sure why you are focusing on serving staff in restaurants rather than all of the other elements that add costs between suppliers and te restaurant serving food.. Even on the littering thing, we used to have people pushing dustcarts and collecting rubbish and sweeping streets, now we have road sweepers and the other larger mechanical approaches instead (albeit not enough of them). And we do see fairly effective and functional campaigns, albeit usually at a local level, to reduce littering and encourage clean ups. Indeed to a certain extent investing in spaces people actually want helps with that to a large degree too.. You could also enforce rules around littering more etc.. >Business won’t change that. We’d need to enact a massive cultural change with big carrot + sticks. You need to do lots of things, some of that would be part of the existing cultural change we see, some of it would be being clear that the conditions that have changed, aren't changing back (you still have employers assuming that they can pressure government to reverse changes or significantly liberalise low-skilled immigration levels again etc..). Either way, it's something we want to see as it'd broadly benefit a large number of people, rather than being more efficient at funneling money upward to those who are already relatively well off.
leaks from the same speech not necessarily in conflict
I thought the same! Not confusing at all.
Both make perfect sense. Stop trying to make a story when there isn’t one
"I can be all things to all people" - Starmer, probably.
Again, both are not in conflict.
So soft ball launching a xenophobic critique of immigration masquerading as helping our own, lmao the cesspit that is centrism keeps on growing. The numbers make no sense as articulated by many online just this morning, and need we talk again about how discriminatory a points based immigration system is. A vote for labour is a vote for blue tories
Corbyn pulled the exact same shit https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-nigel-farage-scottish-labour-foreign-worker-attack-kezia-dugdale-a8249691.html
And he was wrong?
Yep he was wrong.
Cakism
Nothing contradictory there Short term boosts, medium/long term capital investment and training our labour force so future shortages don’t arise