Labour’s exploitation of Eastern European migrants continues with its attack on the rights of people from new member states of the European Union (EU). Having welcomed in workers from those states that joined the EU in 2004, the government had taken a more restrictive approach to the recent accession of Bulgaria and Romania.
Although freedom of movement within EU states cannot be restricted, and Romanians and Bulgarians can therefore enter Britain and reside for an initial three months, there are restrictions on their right to seek employment and they cannot take work without authorisation. Quotas have been imposed, with ‘low skilled migrants’ limited to jobs in agriculture and food processing, with a cap of 20,000 places available.
The Home Office, which had originally planned to discontinue the long-standing Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, will now restrict it exclusively to migrants from Bulgaria and Romania by January 2008. Migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania are clearly being targeted as a pool of cheap labour, which can be used purely in order to fulfil short term seasonal labour needs. Once this seasonal employment is over, they will not be in a position to claim any benefit for being laid off, as their contracts of employment were by nature temporary.
One way around the restrictions is for migrants to declare themselves ‘self-employed’. This means they do not require permission to work. However they then lose their entitlement to the minimum wage and decent working conditions, and are open to exploitation by greedy agencies.
British capitalism is using the workers of Eastern Europe as a reserve army of labour, from which it can draw whatever type of workers it requires at any given point, with no regard either for the mass of the people in the country from which the labour is taken, nor for the conditions of the workers who are brought here.
Alyse Thomson
FRFI 198 August / September 2007
