Now the nature of public sector consultation has for sometime been shambolic, and most people have jumped on the issue of access to consultation and making sure everyone is heard – which is right to a point, (in the coming weeks we will be talking about the Art of Consultation and what is currently wrong with it), but there is also another issue at stake - the demand that WE the public be asked to mediate and choose between services.
In the context of services for asylum seekers, migrants and refugees it’s a dangerous precedent, fuelled by the flames of last week’s discussion on multiculturalism.
The Civil Penalty regime which basically polices employers who employ workers without the right immigration papers is being used to good effect to create tension in the work place. The most recent guidance from the UK Border Agency comprehensive guidance for employers on preventing illegal working published in November 2010, also offers incentives. Cooperation with the UK Border Agency means that the fines for employers are reduced, a grasses charter!
However if you look at who was fined in London last year, http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/employersandsponsors/listemployerspenalties/ it’s not the big large employers, it is the smaller, mostly ethnic businesses and take away franchises that have been targeted.
The NHS has been plagued by stories how thorough agencies they may have employed thousands of illegal workers, and there are even proud revelations on the NHS website about how hundreds of thousands of ponds http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/3315.aspx have been saved by catching people in operations run jointly with the UK Border Agency and the police. Last month 72 individuals were picked up at raids at Guys and St Thomas’s hospitals. How times have changed, from the heyday of Enoch Powell going to the Caribbean to recruit people from the West Indies to work for the NHS – to know where hospitals have become complicit in sending people back.
Now no one is saying that the law should be flaunted, but let’s look in more detail at the situation. The workers had been there for a number of years, paid possibly the minimum wage, and hopefully the London Living Wage; but there are issues about the use of agency workers and how they are more expendable especially if they don’t speak the language or know their rights.
Over at Transport for London there are issues around how people who are and have been legal for a number of years with the right paperwork are being ‘investigated’. There are concerns over health and safety. The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) quite rightly says it will not work with the UK Border Agency, in its attempts to safeguard migrant and vulnerable workers, stories are rife in the construction industry for example about people loosing limbs because of ‘dodgy’ health and safety regimes.
Regardless of where people work It’s easy to pick off people from the shop floor, because they may not speak English (and before anyone says whose fault is that – think carefully about how ESOL is being squeezed under the current proposals) may not be aware of their legal entitlements (not forgetting the dramatic proposals to do away wit legal aid currently out for consultation) and maybe just because of the colour of their skin.
Here they go, we hear you cry, the race card. Well lets be clear large majorities of the lowest paid workers in London’s public sector are from, Blaqck, Asian and Minority Ethnic and Refugee communities, but that’s not because of a lack of personal aspiration or intellect, but because its hard to inspire others and aspire yourself when you haven’t got the financial cushion to enable you to take time off work for example to learn English. Yes and some employers do run English courses in the workplace, but how easy is it to take time off in front of you boss and colleagues and say publicly you are different?
Going back to the issue of the fraud.. The act of fraud is possibly still far more costly then stopping people who can and want to work (i.e. asylum seekers) from working.
The workshop at the convention came up with some very useful proposals
• To produce a “bust card”, regarding immigration advice and migrant workers' rights.
• To organise regular legal advice and information sessions on migrants rights
• Reject the slogan British Jobs for British Workers (after all what and who is British in our new era of multiculturalism)
• Holding social & myth busting event on refugees/asylum seekers and migrant workers during refugee week which is 20-26th June 2011
It would appear then that all the rhetoric about chief executives from big business and large scale public sector quangos and agencies being done away with, and efficiency savings being made through rationalising bureaucratic management’s structures was all just a load of hot air, because the real cuts and attacks appear to be starting at the other end of the spectrum, and the people who can afford it the least – is that the muscular liberalism that was being talked about last week?.
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