British Shipbuilders Axed Because Poles Are 30% Cheaper: 300 Workers On The Royal Navy's New Carriers Laid Off

[OnlyMe]

In the short term it might seem to make sense, in the longer term a successful economy depends on domestic workers earning a sufficiently high amount to be able to take part in that economy and keep the money-go-round turning. This is called "Fordism" after Henry Ford, and would lead to a stronger economy in the longer term than constantly outsourcing work, and watching the money relentlessly move eastwards.

Goes a lot further than just the monetary spin.

In the end you lose the skills, the infrastructure, access to resource and facilities and the will to even bother trying in the first place.

In many industries all critical mass has already been breahed on all counts.

[miko]

+1 I don't think those rates are current.

Last Christmas I was unemployed and went to an interview for a night shift shelf stacking job at BHS , it was NMW and 16 p per hour unsocial hours payment.

Did not get the job and someone did say maybe as you are over 22 and get full rate NMW someone under 22 undercut you.

[Caius]

............. a skilled person work for 9.50 per hour. Tescos pays more for stacking shelves at night. Really this is joke I'm ready to throw in the tools it's not worth going to work.

Lucky bas***d!

[dubsie]

Have you checked with Tescos recently , I don't think they pay that anymore and if you look at the vacancie boards at most Tesco stores they have no jobs vacant.

Our local tescos pays 10.50 per hour for the night shift . You can't expect an experienced tradesman to work

for so little. It's dangerous hard work that should be rewarded so

not to mention supplying you own tools, van, no sick pay or holidays..... Tescos feels like the best bet

Edited November 29, 2010 by dubsie

[Fawkandles]

Tesco is dangerous! I worked in a supermarket stacking cheese, and got "housewife's knee" !!1!

[dubsie]

Tesco is dangerous! I worked in a supermarket stacking cheese, and got "housewife's knee" !!1!

Try plumbing mate your never off your knees, you won't work past 55.

[ken_ichikawa]

Today with the factory jobs gone their children who would now be the same age as they were back then will not be getting married and having kids , they will not be quitening down and becoming responsible and I guess that the next or now genearation of young men with no hope and no prospects are going to be big trouble if our society does not find a proper purpose for them.

Easy Iran will be invaded or a gentlemen's agreement will be made with India and or China to have an limited war with a massive infantry Rush on both sides. North Korea is pretty apt for this, re-introduce conscription and the one rifle between five men concept and there will be near 100% casulties.

[wonderpup]

its all part of globalisation..

Which is a very good thing. competition in the labour market will make everyone better off- I know this is true because tenured* economists say it's true- very keen on open job markets these guys, very keen indeed. Not for themselves, of course, that would be taking things too far- but for everyone else, they are very keen on the whole 'compete for your job security' thing.

*Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure

[Charlie The Tramp Returns]

Try plumbing mate your never off your knees, you won't work past 55.

Don`t forget the Carpet Fitters.

[itsnotme]

My late father was a qualified welder( in all of the various forms, mig, arc and whatever else)cannot remember. Ayway, he was getting £7.50 a hour in 1992, and he thought that was bloody good money.

Now nearly 20 years later, a qualified welders wage starts from about £8,p.h. The wage certainly has not gone up much, compared with 20 years ago, it is cobblers, considering it is quite a skilled trade. Sign of the times or what?? Does being skilled in your job/trade mean nothing now??

Edited November 29, 2010 by itsnotme

[Big Orange]

This aircraft carrier is a farce anyway and let the greedy, stupid BAE run themselves into the ground while our unemployed British wielders and the more richer Polish wielders (after they're finished) bugger off elsewhere to more sane employers in Asia and Australia.

[Buccaneer]

Easy Iran will be invaded or a gentlemen's agreement will be made with India and or China to have an limited war with a massive infantry Rush on both sides. North Korea is pretty apt for this, re-introduce conscription and the one rifle between five men concept and there will be near 100% casulties.

This will leave a generation of chavettes to be supported by the state.........oh we already have that!

[Big Orange]

Supposedly the poorly thought through act of throwing the gates wide open to the hundreds of thousands of European workers prevented Britain's economic crash in the short term. Is this true? I personally think it was a mistake and letting in the relatively impoverished post-Soviet countries into the EU in the 2000s should've been much more gradual and taken more than twenty years. The British and American economies got severely dislocated by rushing millions of jobs into Asia over a short period of time. And stagnent/lowering wages should be blamed more on greedy companies and not the foreign suckers getting employed (who by themselves are no more guilty on a individual level than Westerners unintentionally going into deep debt).

Edited December 2, 2010 by Big Orange

[Tiger Woods?]

Which is a very good thing. competition in the labour market will make everyone better off- I know this is true because tenured* economists say it's true- very keen on open job markets these guys, very keen indeed. Not for themselves, of course, that would be taking things too far- but for everyone else, they are very keen on the whole 'compete for your job security' thing.

*Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure

That's unfair. They wouldn't be able to keep their jobs spouting such tripe if they didn't have tenure. Are you against freedom of thought and speech?

[Peter Hun]

My late father was a qualified welder( in all of the various forms, mig, arc and whatever else)cannot remember. Ayway, he was getting £7.50 a hour in 1992, and he thought that was bloody good money.

Now nearly 20 years later, a qualified welders wage starts from about £8,p.h. The wage certainly has not gone up much, compared with 20 years ago, it is cobblers, considering it is quite a skilled trade. Sign of the times or what?? Does being skilled in your job/trade mean nothing now??

The World is now flat, you have to compete against third world workers and not depend on your birthright to compete.

I personally think it was a mistake and letting in the relatively impoversihed post-Soviet countries into EU in the 2000s should've been much more gradual and taken more than twenty years.

The poverty of Poland was a direct result of the Western Betrayal in the 1940.

Edited December 2, 2010 by Peter Hun

[newbonic]

The poverty of Poland was a direct result of the Western Betrayal in the 1940.

It was a direct result of Stalin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Saying the west is at fault is like saying you asked for it if you were burgled because you have stuff worth nicking. It's the thief's fault, not the victims.

Britain went to war because of Poland in 1939 - and the Anglo-Americans (+canucks, french, etc) were not going to launch WW 3 against the Soviet Union and Red Army in early 1945 for Poland - Europe was wrecked and her people didn't want another 2 or 3 years of total war after they'd just had 5 or 6. Plus the Americans still hadn't defeated Japan and had yet another war to wage in the East.

[PopGun]

The World is now flat, you have to compete against third world workers and not depend on your birthright to compete.

Why don't you try that line on the playing fields of Eton?

Besides, until we have third world living costs, your argument is moot.

[PopGun]

Easy Iran will be invaded or a gentlemen's agreement will be made with India and or China to have an limited war with a massive infantry Rush on both sides. North Korea is pretty apt for this, re-introduce conscription and the one rifle between five men concept and there will be near 100% casulties.

You seriously believe it would be just the men who'd get conscripted to fight? As discussed on this forum many times, there's plenty of reasons why TBTP introduced/permitted women's lib. None of them had anything to do with 'equality', or freedom of choice.

Edited December 2, 2010 by PopGun

[Peter Hun]

It was a direct result of Stalin and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Saying the west is at fault is like saying you asked for it if you were burgled because you have stuff worth nicking. It's the thief's fault, not the victims.

Britain went to war because of Poland in 1939 - and the Anglo-Americans (+canucks, french, etc) were not going to launch WW 3 against the Soviet Union and Red Army in early 1945 for Poland - Europe was wrecked and her people didn't want another 2 or 3 years of total war after they'd just had 5 or 6. Plus the Americans still hadn't defeated Japan and had yet another war to wage in the East.

Maybe the UK/US should have told the 400k Polish soldiers, in British uniforms fighting and dying to regain a free Poland, in 1943 when they handed over Poland to the Soviets.

UK and France (in particular) could have upheld the secret agreement to help Poland when they were attacked in 1939. The UK called it a Phony War, it fact it was doing nothing will Poland fought expecting the promised counterattack. Germany's border was defended by 7 divisons, if the French had continued their feeble invasion of Germany the was could have finished in 1939 with German defeat; the Poles destoyed a quarter of the german airforce and tied up most of the German Army.

The UK and France did basically nothing. In Poland is not called the Phony War, its the Western Betrayal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal

[Big Orange]

France's indecisiveness over the 1930s and in the opening stages of the war when Hitler was tied up in Poland doomed it as well. But if they took most of the blame, why didn't they take in most of the Polish immigrants?

[Damik]

Yes, but then the problem is that the UK money-go-round stops turning and that means you lose your job.

[i am a foreigner ... ]

I do not think it really matters and we can not stop the globalisation anyway ...

Perhaps the ship builders are now Poles, but anything else on the ship (like electronics, engines, paint, furniture, etc ... ) is manufactured out of UK anyway ....

For example Airbuses or car parts are manufactures almost everywhere and just put together in one country ...

For example Germany is full of cheap immigration (Turkey, Eastern Europe) but the economy is going up and they are short of skilled labour ...

On the other side if you want to protect the pure British labour and pay them even better wages then the British economy and exported products will have even more problems to compete with India, China and Eastern Europe ...

------------------------------------------------

IMO we should lower that taxes on labour, put up taxes on consumption, reward innovation, education, reward hard work and penalise living on state benefits ...

Edited December 2, 2010 by Damik

[Peter Hun]

France's indecisiveness over the 1930s and in the opening stages of the war when Hitler was tied up in Poland doomed it as well. But if they took most of the blame, why didn't they take in most of the Polish immigrants?

When? there were a millions Poles in France after 1945. The Poles who were given passports in the UK in 1945 were put into exile by the West handing over their country to the communists. They had, most of them, spent 5 years in British uniform. Going back to Poland wasn't an option, most of them were the army and descendants who defeated the attempted communist invasion of Poland, Germany then towards France in 1921. Stalin was one of the generals defeated and its probably why he executed 22k Polish officers at Katyn etc and put 1.8million Poles (the entire Polish population in the lands he occupied) in concentration camps in 1940. 800k died in two years, before Hitler invaded Russia and Churchill got them release. My father included.

[Big Orange]

I don't think 2 million Poles were deported and overall 500, 000 people from many backgrounds perished in the Gulags around that time.

Edited December 3, 2010 by Big Orange

[Peter Hun]

I don't think 2 million Poles were deported and overall 500, 000 people from many backgrounds perished in the Gulags around that time.

Ok, 1.6million

A Forgotten Odyssey

Public knowledge about deportations of Polish citizens from the territory occupied by Soviet Russia in 1939 is next to nil. Somehow, the world wants to forget about it. And yet, if we consider the size of the mass of people deported, it is an event that deserves more attention. These deportations took place between February 1940 and June 1941. They were carried out right up until Germany invaded Russia. Through my private correspondence with a resident of Brest Litovsk, I learned that the Russians were in a process of transporting Poles to the train waiting for them at the railroad station when German troops were seen advancing towards the town. The Russians left their trucks and ran for their lives leaving everything and everybody behind them.

There have been several attempts to establish the number of Polish citizens in Soviet Russia as a result of hostilities between Poland and the Soviet Government. It is not an easy task. Nobody knows exactly how many died there as a result of malnutrition, disease, executions, and other reasons. According to Zbigniew S. Siemaszko[1], Polish citizens who found themselves in Soviet Russia during the period of September 1939 and June 1941 can be divided into the following into the following groups:

1. Military personnel - 184,000 (12 percent of the total)

2. Civilians, jailed by the Soviets - 250,000 (15 percent)

3. Civilians deported with families (specposielency - "special deportees") - 990,000 (60 percent)

4. Drafted into the Red Army after invasion in 1939 - 210,000 (13 percent)

Total 1,634,000

It is well known that about 22,500 of Polish officers were murdered by the NKVD. Officers, including 41 generals, were imprisoned in several locations: Starobielsk, Oshtashkovo and Kozielsk, Griazoviec and Pavlishchev Bor. About 4,500 of them were found in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, in a mass graves, each killed with a single shot in the back of the head. The graves were discovered by Germans when they occupied that area. Soviet authorities denied that the executions were carried out by the NKVD, but an international commission established that they took place sometimes in spring of 1940, thus at a time when this area was under Soviet jurisdiction. During the Nuremberg Trials, the Katyn massacre was on the agenda, but at the insistence of the Soviet government, there was no judgment in this case “due to lack of evidence”. The fate of the remaining 18,000 officers was never determined, and to this day, remains a mystery. Some sources say that they were loaded on barges and sunk in the North Sea. The enlisted men were placed in various locations, mainly as miners and road builders.

During the time that the Soviets occupied Polish territory, most of the Polish intelligentsia was jailed, sent to Gulag camps, or simply murdered by the NKVD. This group consisted of people who were leaders in any social or political activities, landowners, and owners of stores or factories-- in other words anybody who might have some influence on society. Their fate was probably the worst of all deportees. In Gulag camps, they worked in inhumane conditions, often in mines, being exposed to terrible Russian winter, without proper clothing or food and without any medical care. They were there to die a slow death. Nobody knows how many perished. Some survived and were saved by the “amnesty” (see below).

Rest of the story here

http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/a-forgotten-odyssey/

According to my dad, everybody was deported.

This is a video (which the BBC refuses to broadcast, Polish officers were threatened with jail if they discussed this with the British public after WW2).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qY_XTsA4SY

Edited December 3, 2010 by Peter Hun

[Big Orange]

The Russian Parliament has only now admitted to the Katyn Massacre and the NKVD locked people up for decades to cover it up.