Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 211)
TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007
Mr Brendan Barber, Mr Owen Tudor, Mr Richard Exell,
Mr Jack Dromey and Mr Omer Ahmed
Q200 Lord Moonie:
What sort of issues do migrant workers bring to unions' attention?
Do they differ in any way from others? How are they treated in
the workplace compared to their British colleagues?
Mr Dromey: It is important to start by saying
that there are good examples as well as bad examples. May I take
a good example of FirstBus? We have our ups and our downs with
FirstBus, but when FirstBus needed bus drivers and could not recruit
them in areas like the South West, the way they went about going
to Eastern Europe, Poland in particular, to recruit drivers was
exemplary, both in respect of the recruitment in Poland itself
and then, when they came to Britain, how they were treated, how
they were accommodated and how they were integrated into the workforce.
So there are good examples and it would be wrong to pretend that
it is universally bad. Having said that, there is a depressing
pattern of workers who are promised the moon in their countries
of origin, sometimes with such serious deception in terms of what
actually happens when they arrive here in Britain that it would,
in statutory terms and international law, be classed as trafficking.
The awful reality all too often is the national minimum wage or
less, illegal deductions, deductions for transport, housing, unspecified
administrative charges. For example, often workers on the national
minimum wage have deductions of between £110 and £130
a week, no contracts of employment, zero hours contracts of employment,
compulsory overtime, having to pay for their own safety equipment
and, in extreme cases, racial harassment and violence. In terms
then of the accommodation, where all too often gangmaster employees
or agency employees stay, it is five and ten to a house; sometimes
actually sleeping in the premises where they work and often illegal
evictions. I have been into houses and seen hot-bedding arrangements.
One particular house had 16 people in a small house and they could
not all be there at the same time, so it was a hot-bedding arrangement.
There are such extreme examples. I remember one particular company
that was employing crop pickers where a pregnant woman collapsed
and they were embarrassed about the circumstances in which she
had been working. When she asked for an ambulance to be called,
she was told, "By all means, but you do realise that in this
country, you have to pay for the ambulance to be called. If you
want to leave the place of work and do it yourself, by all means,
do it yourself". There are all too many depressing examples
of that kind. Just finally returning to the food-processing industry,
there are some particular problems in food and agriculture. That
pattern that I described earlier on of the emerging two-tier labour
market is wrong, it is divisive, it does damage social cohesion.
It is strongly arguable also that in some workplaces, it is discriminatory
in terms of who those are who work on inferior conditions of employment.
It is overwhelmingly migrant workers. There is a sad reality in
modern-day Britain which is not sufficiently focused on what,
at its most extreme, is a modern form of slave labour.
Q201 Lord Macdonald of Tradeston:
The TUC's written evidence says "to some extent the threat
[of immigration] to native workers can be addressed by action
against exploitation". We have heard examples given by Mr
Dromey about exploitation. How could that best be reduced? Does
the UK need more resources and/or new enforcement policies for
ensuring employer compliance with the minimum wage with health
and safety regulations, especially in respect of migrant workers?
Mr Barber: The answer is yes and this is a hugely
important issue. Just very briefly to echo Jack's description
of some of the issues that migrant workers face, within the TUC
we established just in the course of the last year a commission
on vulnerable employment, involving not just trade union colleagues
but colleagues from the employer community, independent colleagues
from the academic world as well. We have paid a series of visits
to different parts of the country and have heard too many harrowing
tales of the kind that Jack has described for anybody's comfort.
However, a common theme that has come through all of that work
and the contact that we have had with voluntary organisations
and the statutory agencies that are responsible for enforcement
of the legislation, is that at the moment enforcement is just
utterly ineffectual in too many areas. You start with the basic
point that many migrant workers will not have the basic English
language skills and may simply be utterly uninformed about the
entitlement and protections that they are meant to enjoy. While
efforts are made to redress that, it is clear that huge numbers
of people start with that basic disadvantage. Then there is the
level of knowledge about where to turn to if you find yourself
facing an abuse that you think may not be lawful. There is a patchwork
quilt of agencies with responsibilities for all of the different
issues in the world of work. Minimum wage enforcement is the responsibility
of HMRC, health and safety is the responsibility of the Health
and Safety Executive and local authorities also. For many of the
basic issues around the contract of employment, the kind of examples
of under payment that we have heard about time and time again
through the work of the TUC Commission, you need to use the employment
tribunal system to seek a remedy. All of these agencies are very,
very under-resourced. HMRC have at the moment something like between
70 and 80 staff responsible for the enforcement of the minimum
wage across the whole of the economy. The Gangmasters' Licensing
Authority, with their specific responsibilities for gangmasters
in agricultural and food processing, have 27 officers at the moment.
The Health and Safety Executive have seen a massive reduction
in their staff. Formerly, they had a staff of over 4,000, currently
now down to 3,500, and with a further major cut in the number
of field inspectors responsible for the visits to workplaces.
In an average small business, you are likely to find yourself
visited by an inspector on behalf of the Health and Safety Executive
something like once in every 300 to 400 years. It is a bizarre
statistic. The picture that we have seen is too much that amongst
those unscrupulous people who are prepared to exploit systematically—and
these cases we have heard about, these are not isolated examples
of people falling into a bad practice occasionally, these are
systematic examples of real exploitation—at the moment they
take place in an area of impunity where people will simply not
be able to find a remedy. At the moment, we are considering proposals
for a radical shake-up of the enforcement arrangements and I hope
that that is something that this Committee would be prepared to
support and I hope that it is an issue that the Government will
be prepared to attend to.
Mr Dromey: May I just add briefly to that? Number
one: you need, as Brendan has argued convincingly, to enforce
the existing law. Number two: there is a legitimate case for the
extension of regulation in relation to equal treatment of agency
workers and the directly employed and also gangmasters across
the economy as a whole. The final point I would make is that whilst
Government have a responsibility that they must discharge, we
should not always look to Government for all the solutions. May
I give you a practical example of that? It is how clients procure
that can have a major impact in terms of exploitation. The supermarkets
abuse their market power along the food industry supply chain.
That inevitably impacts upon wages and conditions of employment.
It is that abusive market power that is driving that two-tier
labour market in too many food factories. The banks and the finance
houses in the City of London—it was absolutely wrong that
you had a successful commercial centre, and I am glad that we
do have a successful commercial centre in our country, but the
only problem was that the cleaners were on the national minimum
wage, no sick pay, no pension and basic statutory entitlement.
Dare I say it? Even in this building we had a problem. The good
women, the housekeepers in the House of Lords, directly employed
on good conditions of employment with a good pension, but until
two years ago the two contractors operating here paid just above
the minimum wage, no sick pay, no pension and basic statutory
holiday entitlement. Do I blame the contractors for that? Of course
they have a responsibility, they are the legal employer, but it
was the House of Commons' authorities trying to get cleaning on
the cheap that was driving down the wages of those cleaners. So
Government should act, but all those with responsibility to act
should also discharge those responsibilities.
Q202 Lord Skidelsky:
This question follows very much from the last one. How many migrant
workers have joined unions and by how much has this boosted union
membership and also revenues from membership fees? Do you consider
recent migrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere as a major new
pool of potential union members? The intuition behind that question
is that since most of them say they only want to stay a short
time, they may not attach much priority to becoming a union member
and simply take their chances in the labour market as it is. Do
the unions have a particular role in relation to the A8 accession
migrants?
Mr Dromey: The starting point must be this,
that all those with a responsibility to act, including trade unions
... We cannot blame others unless we rise to the challenge ourselves—and
we have invested enormous resources in what we regard to be a
moral cause without counting the pennies. May I give you a very
practical example of that? I coordinated the drive around bringing
the Gangmasters' Licensing Bill into law. It was a remarkable
coalition along the food industry supply chain and, I am proud
to say, with all-party support in both the Commons and the Lords.
Have we as a consequence seen thousands of gangmaster employees
joining the union? No. Was it the right thing to do? Absolutely.
Having said that, it is of course the job of trade unions to organise
workers and to be brave in doing that. I am sure no-one on this
Committee would think this, but if anyone thinks this is an easy
position to take, believe you me, when you stand up and say that
we should reach out to the newly arrived, embrace them and ensure
that everyone is treated equally and fairly, you can get a very
difficult response from within your own union. Let me just give
you a practical example of that. I remember reading out a letter
to our executive last year where, after I had made a particular
public speech acting as a champion of migrant workers, I received
an anonymous letter from somebody signing themselves "A T&G
member," who accused me of being a "Wog lover",
a "Nigger lover" and bringing "Islamist shit"
into Britain. It is not easy to take the stand that we have taken,
but we take it unashamedly because it is the right thing to do.
Q203 Chairman:
Would you still reckon that not too many of them are joining the
unions as a result?
Mr Dromey: It depends where you are talking
about. Amongst gangmaster employees the nature of the industry
is such that the turnover is so high that that does not happen.
In food factories, in car factories, where there are large number
of migrant workers, yes. Our experience is that they are good
trade unionists and the key from our point of view is to embrace
them and to ensure that all those work together, workers here
for generations, many themselves, by the way, second, third and
fourth generation migrants, working with the newly arrived.
Mr Barber: Very briefly, if I may, just to say
that there are very active programmes by a number of unions to
seek actively to recruit and represent migrant workers, producing
literature in relevant languages, establishing in some unions,
branches that have been dedicated to helping to bring Polish workers
together, for example, in different parts of the country. Although
some are clearly short stay who will come to Britain for a relatively
short time with a view to returning home, of course some are coming
with a real potential to permanent settlement. It is important
to reach out very actively to them.
Q204 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell:
If I may, two questions—the second one is going to be very
broad but the first one is on the paper that you were given. Your
written evidence cites, in Note 27, the National Institute estimate
that "immigration has raised British GDP by 3.1% since 1998".
It would be quite surprising if it had not because there are just
more people who are employed. However, the very same paper found
that 3.8% of the population is now made up of migrants who have
entered since 1998. If you put those two facts together and work
out what must have happened to GDP per capita, that implies that
it has been pulled down by 0.6 of a percent. Not a huge amount,
but a slight negative. If that is the case, if they have got their
figures right, does that not contradict your assertion that British
society generally gains from the migrant impact because the most
reasonable interpretation of British society would be GDP per
capita surely, not GDP?
Mr Exell: It is very observant to note an aside
in a footnote, but when we got this question, it did prompt me
to return to some of the reading that I had done after we had
submitted our written comments and there is a more recent National
Institute report. Rebecca Riley is again one of the authors but
this time with Ray Barrell and John Fitzgerald from ESRI in Ireland,
EU enlargement and migration: Assessing the macroeconomic impacts,
NIESR Discussion Paper No. 292. I will leave a copy here. That
makes the point that I found from talking through with people
that I am particularly bad at explaining. It is the point about
lagged impacts. Barrell and Riley say "Following a small
reduction in GDP per capita in the short term in the EU-15 receiving
countries, GDP per capita rises in the longer term. The reduction
in the short term comes about as it takes some time for the capital
stock to adjust to the inflow of labour and for the additional
labour to be absorbed into employment. In the longer term, GDP
per capita rises as the population of working age increases relative
to the population as a whole". There is a table which shows
that the impact of EU enlargement and migration since the A8 entry
has been negative on GDP per capita up till now but in 2009 they
expect it to start rising and by 2015 they expect the positive
impact on GDP per capita to be higher than the worst year of negative
impact on GDP per capita.
Q205 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell:
Do you know whether they also expect GNP per capita to be positive,
given that the implicit assumption there is that capital will
come in to match that labour and presumably there is then a net
flow of income out on the return to that capital? You would have
to know that to know whether we were actually better off.
Mr Exell: Yes. They have not given any figures
for GNP per capita, but certainly, going to the broader points
behind what you are saying, we would not underestimate the significance
of GDP per capita. In other contexts it is one of our favourite
statistics; so we are not going to understate its importance now.
There are two things here. First of all, the likely effect is
not only the impact of capital, it is also the impact of the time
it takes for immigrant workers to learn British ways of working;
it is also the time it takes for British companies to get the
most out of immigrant workers. It is not entirely an effect of
capital inflow. The second point that we would make is that until
recently, most migrant workers have on average been earning higher
wages than the average for native workers, so the impact of GDP
per capita will have been positive. In terms of the A8 immigrants,
there it is really too early to say, to be honest, but the early
indications do seem to be that A8 migrants have been going into
lower-paid jobs, but then, on the other hand, they are leaving
the country quite quickly as well. So we would not pooh-pooh concerns
about GDP per capita, but we do not think it undermines the case
that overall the country is better off as a result of migration
and therefore can afford to compensate the people who may be at
risk as a result of this.
Mr Dromey: The problem about where this debate
goes is that Migration Watch then leap on the statistics and say
"There is no benefit to our economy". It could not be
further from the truth. Who would pick the crops, work in food,
drive the buses and build the houses without those migrant workers.
They put in more, they take out less, they contribute towards
the dynamism of the economy, real wages have risen by 24% and
they expand the economy with more vacancies. Incidentally, there
is also a wider context to all of this: £28 billion, the
benefits for example of overseas students to our economy on the
one hand and, on the other hand, the startling statistic that
the World Bank has recently come up with of £20 billion that
goes from the first world to the third world by way of remittances
from migrant workers sustaining their families and their communities
back home. So there is real benefit, both to our economy and also
to the global economy and for the Sir Andrew Greens of this world
to describe that as being marginal and a Mars bar per week misses
the point, to say the least.
Chairman: You have made the point that
you wanted to make anyway, so that is fine. Thank you for saying
you would give us the additional evidence that you want which
we would like to look at.
Q206 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell:
Coming straight back to the point you have just made about who
would do the jobs, you are asserting that, whatever else, we need
the labour. Can I ask a very general point about that? That does
imply that we need a permanently expanding population. Were it
not for migration, according to the GAD figures, at the present
fertility rate the UK population would pretty much stay flat at
61 million between now and 2050; with the latest forecast on immigration
it goes up to 75 million. If we are saying that is essential for
our economy, it is presumably essential for every other economy
in the world which means that if indeed the world population,
as per the UN forecast, stabilises at about 9.5 billion by the
end of this century, that is going to be a problem; a problem
that we will have to reverse to make sure that it keeps on growing.
Are you saying that there is something about human society that
it needs to be permanently growing in population level? Does that
give you no concerns about world environmental sustainability
when we think about that at the level of the world rather than
at the level of UK?
Mr Dromey: You need to have a sensible debate
around exactly that: sustainability. The danger about the debate
in terms of how it is going is that if you say on current trends
10 million more people will come into Britain, first of all that
assumes that current trends will continue. Current trends are
not the law of God. Second, it then feeds this dangerous debate
which is increasingly focused on numbers. When you end up with
the rhetoric of "floods of immigrants coming into our country"
associated with some of the tabloid hysteria about "they
are taking all the jobs", according to the Daily Express,
"they are going to the top of the housing queue", again
according to the Daily Express, it is wrong. A sensible
debate around the medium- to long-term needs of our economy, absolutely;
around the management of economy, absolutely. It is time we had
an intelligent debate and not a debate which is increasingly xenophobic
in its nature.
Q207 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell:
I entirely accept that, but it does mean that one might have to
be careful of extreme arguments on the other side. The implication
of your statement that we need the labour is that if in five years'
time it turns out immigration happens to fall to zero because
A8 is complete and the Romanians and Bulgarians do not get there,
you would be saying "We have not got them, we have to go
and find more immigrants" rather than simply saying "Well,
what is, is what is and we will manage with what is".
Mr Dromey: Needs change; you cannot extrapolate
too much from current trends. Yes, we need managed migration but
what we do not need is a debate which summons up the image of
10 million about to land on our shores as though they were going
to decamp from submarines at midnight.
Q208 Chairman:
You were quoted in the press in April as saying the economic and
moral case for an amnesty for illegal immigrants was overwhelming.
Could you explain the economic case and what is the TUC's position
on that?
Mr Dromey: It is important to put this briefly
in context, which is that under the law as it stands you can be
legal one day and not legal the next. For that army of undocumented
workers, it is a miserable existence, a twilight world of uncertainty
and we have had members who, when they stood up and objected to
being treated shamefully, have been reported and then deported.
No-one knows the exact numbers. It is said to be half a million.
The question is what to do about that. Of course, you need to
sort out the immigration system because it has been a mess for
a generation. Number two: I have always taken the view that those
who come here and seriously abuse our hospitality do not have
a right to be in Britain. Number three: then what do you do about
those half a million employees, and I know many of them? The cardinal
has said, and rightly so, that it would be immoral to think that
you could hunt down half a million people and deport them, but
in terms of the economic case, the costs of that would be enormous.
The National Audit Office calculate £11,000 per person, £4.7
billion, would take 25 years to do it and, incidentally, what
you would have is many, many examples of what you had—do
you remember—in the Shetland Islands when good local settled
people came to be deported and the local community said "Hang
on a second, that's not fair". If you have a programme of
earned regularisation, what are the economic benefits? What is
interesting is that the National Crime Intelligence Service talked
about unpaid tax and national insurance of £3.3 billion as
a consequence of what happens at the moment. That would build
132 schools and 13 hospitals. Ultimately politicians are going
to have to face up to this reality. You can tell the people of
Britain fairy tales: that you can hunt down and deport half a
million people. Alternatively, what you can do is have a programme
of earned regularisation so that individuals emerge out of that
twilight world and pay tax. There are growing voices amongst employers
who believe that that is the sensible thing to do as well.
Q209 Lord Vallance of Tummel:
Does the planned reform of the UK's immigration system include
the policy changes you would like to see? In other words, have
the Government been listening to the unions here? Specifically,
what do you make of the new points-based system?
Mr Barber: On the issue of the points-based
system, we generally welcome the attempt to simplify what has
been a very complex system to bring about much greater clarity
and transparency, but I have to say that the objectives of a managed
migration system should not exclusively focus on the economic
benefits to the UK. The rights of migrant workers need to be at
the heart of the system and we are concerned that existing immigration
law and the new system breach the rights of migrant workers under
both the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers and their
Families and indeed a convention of the International Labour Organisation,
ILO Convention 143. We have concerns about any system that ties
migrant workers to individual employers, which puts them in a
particularly vulnerable position and renders them particularly
open to abuse by unscrupulous employers. For example, there is
a distinctive visa system that applies to migrant domestic workers
and, having met representatives of those workers, I know that
because of their reliance on the employer for a continued right
to remain in Britain, they can find themselves being open to pretty
gross abuse. If they do not get the employer's support to remain,
then they are potentially vulnerable to being instantly deported.
In those circumstances, there are employers who are prepared to
take pretty grim advantage of that. So we do have some concerns
over the system and the new proposals for the points-based system,
but we welcome the attempt through it to bring some greater clarity
and transparency out.
Mr Dromey: Do we object to a points-based system
in principle? No, we do not. It is about how you work it through
in practice, recognising a number of things, without adding to
what Brendan said, that actually the skills that you require from
outwith the European Union are mixed skills at different ends
of the labour market. You need to have proper regard incidentally
to historic Commonwealth ties. You need to ensure that any monitoring
of the system in practice here in Britain is not discriminatory
in its impact in terms of who is asked to prove their legal status
and also you need to avoid the law of unintended consequences.
What Gwyneth Dunwoody was saying last week in another place was
very interesting, about the inadvertent implications for her constituency
in terms of care workers as a consequence of people currently
here and whether they would be able to stay. Is a points-based
system going in the right direction? Yes. It is about getting
it right at the next stage, with ourselves of course but all other
stakeholders being part of that process.
Q210 Lord Vallance of Tummel:
Aside from the points-based system, are there any other policy
changes which you advocated to Government which they have not
picked up?
Mr Barber: We have alluded to our central concerns
about the need to ensure that at the heart of the arrangement
there are clear and effective measures to ensure that migrant
workers are not open to abuse. That is the way of safeguarding
some of the concerns about risks to pay and so on as well as ensuring
dignity and decent treatment for the migrant workers themselves.
Q211 Lord Layard:
You mentioned briefly the Government's submission to this inquiry,
but I wonder whether you have any other comments on what they
said?
Mr Barber: We were broadly positive about the
overall analysis represented in the Government's submission. Just
to say that we do welcome that there has been a very open debate
with Government and we know Government have consulted with us
and other stakeholders too as they have developed their thinking
on policy in this area. This is an area where we think that broad-based
consultation is essential and we welcome that.
Mr Ahmed: We very strongly welcome the detail
and the dispassionate tone of the government submissions. We believe
they have made a very significant contribution to what is clearly
a very difficult area for policy makers and yes, it is something
which we very much welcome.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
I am most grateful to you; it was a helpful session and we appreciate
the time and trouble that you have taken to come to help us. Thank
you very much.
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