Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Reforming Freedom Of Movement To Support Workers And Reduce Immigration

Denis MacShane 11th June 2018

Denis MacShane

Denis MacShane

We now have a glimpse into the hard Tory vision of how a fully Brexited Britain will treat Europeans who want to work here. All during the 20th century after 1945, Britain had to import workers to do the jobs the sturdy white Englishman didn’t want to do.

200,000 Polish ex-soldiers after 1945 were sent down coal mines. Anti-European Yorkshire coalminers refused to work with the Poles who had their own shifts and had to open their own working men’s clubs.  Windrush Afro-Caribbeans who arrived soon after to do essential public service work the white Englishman wasn’t available for. Immigrants from the former Indian empire shaping today ‘s 3 million strong Muslim community . More than a million Irish citizens came under the freedom of movement arrangements between London and Dublin. Cypriots who transformed the restaurant offer in London after 1960. They were all rejected to begin with. “No Coloured, No Irish, Dogs Welcome” could be seen on boarding houses in the 1950s.

In the 1960s and 1970s Enoch Powell tried to fuse anti-immigration hate into a political project.  But he was repudiated by the political and media establishment. Today’s Britain has more second-generation immigrants starring in major roles in public life, business, the media and the creative sector than any other European country.

More recently, the anti-immigrant story has flared into life again. All the Powellite language was used to denounce incomers from Europe culminating in the notorious Leave poster showing Britain invaded by a snaking queue of Levantine refugee-immigrants.

Now the right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank has come up with some deeply unpleasant suggestions that Europeans doing the low-pay, anti-social work the true born Brit shuns should be branded with biometric identification, finger-printed, and not allowed to have the same income as fellow British workers doing the same job, then booted out after two years.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

This will require a giant new bureaucracy to administer measures which seem at odds with British traditions of tolerance and welcome. If implemented they will produce reciprocal measures against young British citizens who want to live and work in European countries often doing low-pay jobs to earn a living.

It is one of the oddest aspects of the Brexit saga since June 2016 that no-one on the left – Labour MPs, trade unions, ‘progressive’ think-tanks – has developed a policy matrix that first controls freedom of movement without breaking EU law, second increases jobs for British workers, third develops workplace rights to control hiring.

Elsewhere in the EU freedom of movement was hemmed in with restrictions. It does not apply to state or public sector employment even if the biggest employer of EU citizens in the UK is the NHS. It is based on work, not living off benefits. It allows tough registration rules.  It requires that health, unemployment and old-age care insurance is taken out. There is even an emergency brake provision if a sudden wave of immigration overwhelms public order or social infrastructure.

Key EU laws now just strengthened insist that workers sent (‘posted’) by their employer from one country to another must be paid the rate of the job locally. Employment agencies were set up to offer cut-rate agency workers so the EU mandated that they should be given staff employment after a given period. Working time rules were brought in to stop a return to 60- and 70-hour weeks. The European Court of Justice has said Uber drivers are employees and must be treated as such.

Sadly, both Labour and then the Con-LibDem government opposed most of these measures, or delayed their application. Gordon Brown, under the baleful influence of Treasury neo-liberal ideologues, instructed Labour MEPs and party representatives drawing up European election manifestos to oppose core social justice measures.

The concern over the volume and velocity of arrivals of new workers from Europe was real. It could have been dealt with by re-thinking the way the UK’s internal labour market failed to train local citizens and tilted the balance towards often unscrupulous exploitative bosses.

Both Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem ministers share the responsibility for the abolition of effective craft apprenticeship training. This led to the arrival of Irish and continental Europeans who were properly trained as electricians, plumbers, carpenters – trades Britain stopped training for in the Thatcher years.

Is it too late for the Labour Party under today’s leadership to work with the TUC and European labour market thinkers in drawing up proposals that better control movement of workers without fantasising about an officious new bureaucracy to control Europeans working amongst us?


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

For Labour MPs a re-design of the UK labour market might be seen as worthwhile in political terms in order to reconnect to workers. It is a better response than the current Labour fatalism on Brexit of hoping to trip up the Government now and then in the Commons or Lords but without any alternative project to support British workers and keep job-creating investment flowing into the British economy. The alternative on offer from the right – to treat European workers as second-class helots – should be rejected with contempt.

Denis MacShane

Denis MacShane was a Labour MP (1994-2012) and served as UK minister of Europe. He writes regularly on European politics and Brexit.

You are here: Home / Politics / Reforming Freedom Of Movement To Support Workers And Reduce Immigration

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin
central and eastern Europe,unions,recognition Social dialogue in central and eastern EuropeMartin Myant
women soldiers,Ukraine Ukraine war: attitudes changing to women soldiersJennifer Mathers and Anna Kvit
military secrets,World Trade Organization,WTO,NATO,intellectual-property rights Military secrets and the World Trade OrganizationUgo Pagano
energy transition,Europe,wind and solar Europe’s energy transition starts to speed upDave Jones

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube