-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 29, 2007 7:39:34 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Tony Blair learns that immigrants are eroding wages,
increasing unemployment
New immigrants eroding pay levels
· Senior adviser warns Blair over east European influx
· PM due to give key speech today on future of work
Patrick Wintour, political editor
The Guardian, March 30, 2007
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,,2046233,00.html
The influx of immigrants into the EU from the 10 eastern European
accession countries may be starting to push down wages among low-
paid workers, leading to a rise in unemployment among unskilled
workers, the prime minister has been told by one of his closest
advisers.
Tony Blair was given the politically sensitive information by Lord
Turner at a seminar in preparation for a major lecture today on the
future of work. The lecture is one of a series of valedictory
addresses being given by the prime minister.
Concerns over the impact of immigration are understood to be shared
by ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions, even though
the government's official economic analysis has not yet shown a
clear link between falling pay levels and immigration from eastern
Europe.
Lord Turner, a former chairman of the Low Pay Commission and author
of the government's landmark report on pensions, told Mr Blair that
the latest evidence suggested that migrants were beginning to push
down wages at the lower end of the income scale. They were
displacing some less skilled workers, making it more difficult to
persuade some of the long-term unemployed to seek work -- partly
because the immigrant workers were more willing to work unlawfully
for less than the minimum wage.
The influx may also make it more difficult to increase the level of
the minimum wage in the future. The introduction of the minimum
wage in 1999 will be hailed by Mr Blair in today's speech as one of
the major achievements of the Labour government.
Since the 10 eastern European countries joined the EU, the UK
economy has absorbed an estimated 500,000 migrant workers, although
many of these will have returned to their native country.
Mr Blair was urged by other academics at the seminar to do more to
counter growing wage inequalities in Britain, on the basis that
widening inequalities between senior executives and other workers
within a company can reduce productivity. He has been reluctant to
take such advice, arguing that any wage inequality has been driven
by international competition for senior executives.
In his speech, Mr Blair will argue that the Labour government has
given a new meaning to the term "labour flexibility", turning it
from a euphemism for exploitation into a phrase which helps to
empower workers with skills and rights.
"In the era of open economies, a flexible labour market is a
desirable, indeed a necessary, thing," the prime minister will say.
"We saw flexibility as a two-way street. We wanted to give
flexibility to the employee as well as the employer.
"This used to be posed as a choice: either a flexible labour market
or rights for workers .... [Instead] we saw that you could have a
flexible labour market and a flexible labour force -- indeed, that
it was vital to have both."
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