A charter for exploitation

Les Allamby, Director, Law Centre (NI)

Faced with tabloid pressure, the government has barely opened its labour market to Bulgarians and Romanians from 1 January 2007. Skilled workers can work in the UK with a work permit or under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme. The low skilled will be restricted to existing quota schemes to fill vacancies in the agriculture and food processing sectors. Deftly, the government has moved those being granted access to this short-term scheme from other parts of Eastern Europe to Bulgaria and Romania with no net increase in the numbers allowed into the UK. Overall numbers will not exceed 20,000 people a year, with the right to work limited to six months with no access to public housing or social security benefits. In addition, the Worker Registration Scheme will continue to apply to Accession State nationals for at least a further two years.

This decision appears deceptively coherent, in that local labour market needs can increasingly be met through the expansion of the European Union with less use of work permit arrangements. Moreover, new arrangements for the highly skilled and wealthy will continue to offer these groups the opportunity for longer term settlement. Life has also been made progressively tougher for asylum seekers and this, alongside a combination of other external factors, has led to a fall in the numbers seeking asylum.

There is, however, a paradox. Bulgarian and Romanian nationals now have freedom to travel throughout the European Union. They have the right to take up self-employment providing they remain financially self-sufficient. This is potentially a charter for exploitation, with Bulgarians and Romanians working for unscrupulous employers yet characterised as self-employed or driven into working underground. In both cases, workers will have few employment rights and next to no social protection.

By 2011 at the latest for A8 nationals and 2014 for Bulgarians and Romanians there will have to be full rights to work and access to social protection. Is there a need to be so cautious about access to social security benefits and other support? The evidence suggests that such caution is unfounded. Recent figures for those registered under the Home Office Worker Registration Scheme in Northern Ireland show that very few are claiming in-work benefits. Given the numbers working in traditionally poorly paid environments, there is a need for a benefits take up campaign among migrant workers. Furthermore, less than one per cent of those arriving have attempted to claim out of work benefits. Current treatment leaves A8 workers who find employment and then lose work within the first twelve months of registration extremely vulnerable to destitution and exploitation. The same will apply to Bulgarians and Romanians who arrive and take up self-employment or work in the black economy.

Government, researchers and social commentators agree that opening up the labour market in 2004 to A8 nationals was a success. Skills shortages in the labour market have been plugged, economic performance has been strengthened, with little evidence of domestic workers being displaced or wages undercut. In 2005, the Institute of Public Policy Research produced ‘Paying their Way: the Fiscal Contribution of Immigrants in the UK’ and concluded: ‘research confirms that far from being a drain on the public purse, immigrants actually contribute more than their share fiscally. It may also suggest that many recent immigrants (especially those arriving on the various labour migration programmes and from new members of the EU) are making relatively large contributions to the public purse’.

The lack of social protection is in contrast to Northern Ireland government departments’ work to develop an information and enforcement strategy for migrant workers and to ensure joint thinking across government departments. With OFMDFM funding, the Law Centre, Animate and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission have published rights guides in a number of languages for migrant workers from European Economic Area, Accession States and elsewhere. For migrant workers, however, rights based information is only valuable where rights actually exist. It is time for government to actually recognise the value and contribution of migrant labour and offer the same support available to the rest of us when losing work.