Workers revolt over globalised labour. Will the Left listen?

While Gordon Brown tries to create a new world order in Davos, the Refinery strike in North Lindsey and its support at other power stations demonstrate the level of anger towards the economics of immigration and globalised labour. Total's employment practices show that we have gone further than merely allowing immigrants to come to Britain and compete for work; the unrestricted movement of goods, capital and labour encourages employers to treat workers as another unit of resource to be transferred at will across national borders. After all, it is rational to shop around if a saving can be made and why not ship in Italian and Portughese construction workers rather than using locals?

BBC and Sky News report the view of the Labour Government: “But a Downing Street spokesman said the IREM contract had been agreed 'some time ago when there was a shortage of skilled labour in the construction sector in the UK'.” So much for British jobs for British workers - and this is at a time of rising unemployment. But how skilled are the requirements of this work? And haven't the government been spending taxpayer billions on training schemes to fill the skills-gap?

The problem is that under EU law, this practice is entirely legitimate. The free market in labour was conceived initially, I think, as a a way of rivalling the United States, getting beyond petty national interests; there was probably some assumption about a social market and fair treatment of workers; big business would have liked the flexibility this freedom would bring; and liberals would cherish the freedom of movement and resulting creative diversity: the so-called vibrancy which all enlightened people are supposed to celebrate. Consistent as Total's labour policy is with internationalist ideals, it offends many of our deeply-held moral assumptions, namely that a company should be working with the community where it makes its money; that governments have a duty first and foremost to defend the interests of its own people. These views are now-old fashioned, parochial; consequently they are discarded by an alliance of the enlightened voices of the internationalist Left and the more down-to-earth financial motivations of global Big Business.

We see how the free market in labour allows the development of a amoral version of free-market capitalism, where workers become another unit of resource, like goods and capital. They can be moved about from country to country if the economics are right - or more correctly, if the politics allow it, because the politics to a large extent determine the economic rules of engagement. With restrictions on the movement of labour, employers would be required to look for their workforce in the country where they operate. Such a framework might still allow some high-skilled workers to be employed, but we have to realise that flexibility in the labour market changes company behaviour: it is not just that a company will find a better-qualified person elsewhere if they need to: they will actively look for people outside because it is likely they can take on people more cheaply, who are prepared to work in conditions that the companies like. Why shop on the High Street when you can shop on the Internet? Why employ from a pool of British workers when you have an EU-wide (often world-wide) pool available, some of whom, by simples laws of probability, are more likely to fit the bill.

The free-market in labour allows companies to aggressively undercut local labour; if this leads to higher unemployment in the area of operations, that is not their problem; in fact, the Government are happy to support the long-term unemployed using the taxpayers of middle-income and low-income earners. State-sponsored Welfarism and globalised free-market economics complement each other very well. If you were a low-paid or even middle-paid worker, why would you work when you can get money on the dole and immigration policies are driving down your wages? When to work is to lose housing benefits, child credit allowances and to pay more taxes? - and companies can drive down wages if they don't want to pay the going rate. The workers think it is not a level-playing field.

They are right, it is not a level-playing field. This is why the workers are revolting. And how revolting they must seem to commentators on the left who are already criticising Gordon Brown for his British Jobs for British Workers speech in front of the Unions 18 months ago. They say correctly, like Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 news, that Gordon Brown's promise is inconsistent with the EU law and globalising agenda which he supports: EU laws for EU workers. Well done, Krishna, for highlighting the Government's hypocrisy. But Guru-murthy was wrong in implying that the speech somehow created the discontent. The injustice is real and deeply-felt by workers across Britain, not just those with leverage like the Power workers. It gave the strikers a hostage to fortune, a phrase they could throw back in the Government's face; but it didn't create the issue.

The workers' union, Unite, are stressing that they have been lobbying the government on the issue: “Unite has raised the growing problem of UK workers being excluded from important engineering and construction projects at the highest levels of Government”; they must have been doing it very quietly. There is some talk that companies must "give UK workers equal opportunities to build Britain's infrastructure", but no campaign against the overall employment framework. Note that the strike is still unsupported by the union; not just because of the lack of a ballot, one suspects, but because the Union does not want to support it. It might be seen as xenophobic, or anti-EU; it might suggest that the Labour Government's polices diverge from the views of its core supporters. This consensus might be cracking now as (reported by Sky News: see link) one Unite official described it as "a total mockery"... "There are men here whose fathers and uncles have worked at this refinery, built this refinery from scratch. It's outrageous,". The BBC's report, linked to above, states that "Unite's governing national executive has called for a national protest in Westminster, and joint general secretary Derek Simpson said it was consulting its lawyers over the legality of engineering and construction employment practices." They seem to be led by their own workers on this issue.

Maybe the unions, like the rest of us, have been intimidated by the combination of pro-immigration and blackmail and the intellectual stranglehold of free-market economics over the West's intelligensia. Or their leadership is as seduced by left-wing internationalism as the Labour and Liberal Democrats. Given a decade's deafening silence from the Trade Unions about the effects of immigration on the wages of low- and middle-skilled workers, one could be forgiven for thinking that they also care more about solidarity with the Left than solidarity with the workers. Why do their members pay union dues? I suppose it is so they can get good redundancy settlements when their jobs are taken by foreign workers, either by outsourcing to abroad or by cheap immigrant labour at home. The evidence that newly-arrived immigrants will live and work in poor conditions is well-attested; how could a father from this country compete, who needs to support his family and pay a mortgage?

This issue is front page in the Daily Mail, and also in the Daily Express, but was curiously muted in the editions of the left-wing Guardian, whose website have picked up on it today. The Independent's leader describes the strikers as protectionists, declares its support for globalisation and blames Brown for his "British Jobs for British workers" speech, which is a typical example of how pious internationalism is now firmly part of the liberal-left's default view. I would expect the BBC to relegate the issue to second level if they can, and to concentrate on how Brown's rhetoric has inflamed the situation by giving the strikers a false perspective or inflaming their easily-led passions, or some such patronising flannel. The fact that Cameron's response was to blame Brown's British workers speech as encouragement for the BNP will aid the left-wing agenda because equivocation from the Conservative party will allow the pro-globalisation, pro-immigration BBC to claim that they are being balanced.