The Day The Immigrants Left (Tonight) BBC1 9pm

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Didn't see the programme, but there's a very good article about it on the Beeb's website:

Are jobless Brits scared by hard work?

Money quote:

And comparing Brits with Eastern Europeans is not presenting a level playing field, says Professor Sennett.

The average Eastern European worker is young and "putting aside cash to go home maybe to start a car washing business or open a small shop".

"You are working to an end and so you are willing to put up with the crap. You are not looking at your job as a future but as a temporary activity. It's about concentrating into a short time as much labour as you can. They're not going to do that all their lives."

Very true, a lot of workers are coming over from countries were average pay is a fraction of what it is here, so even on minimum wage they are working for multiplies of the wage they would be on back home, factor into that also that its something they come to do for a year or two before heading home and you can understand why they do it.

If someone wanted to pay me four or five times the UK national average pay to pick spuds (or some other such labour intensive job)  in poland for a year or two i'd be over in a flash as would many others im sure.

Picking veg can be a bastard I should know especially if Your boss is a dodgy Turk shouting all day and throws fruit at the Turkish and Nepalese workers, he wouldn't dare throw it at the Europeans and East Asians even though other than that we had equally shit conditions and pay. The bastard tried to do me out of a days work (AUD$68, that was about €34 for 8 hours backbreaking work in 40'c+, fckr had me on the tomatoes where only a few where ripe, so I had to waste time distinguishing between ripe and not yet, fckr). Went out to him with a lad in the hostel from Moyross, I had recorded all the work we had done, every single bucket. Between my pedantic bookkeeping and the Limerickmans sheer scariness' we got paid.

[delboy]

I used to pick spuds as a saturday job (thank f**k it wasn't all week) for £12 a day and a bowl of stew, its was backbreaking work all right, they were kicked out onto the ground and you had to bend for every last one, none of this coming by you on a conveyor belt nonsense. At the end of the day your hamstrings and back were clean knackered.

They certainly got their twelve quids worth out of me thats for sure.