There was the overweight taxi driver named Trevor cracking quite amusing adult jokes in his strong cockney accent with his two Indian friends, one I recollect, called Ali. “Last week” said Trevor.. “five of us went up West for my mate’s stag night and we blew a grand on a slap up meal, a club and just 7 bottles of Champers but we didn’t even get plastered!..then my cousin Dave told me yesterday that he and a few buddies flew over to Sophia in Bulgaria and got the same for less than three hundred Euros” he added.
“Cor blimey mate” was the stunned reaction from Ali.. “how the xxxx do they do that?” he questioned. So the banter went on, covering cheap flights and booze, green eyed Latvian women with high cheekbones and the large numbers of Pols arriving in London. It was surprising also to hear the two Indians complain about the number of these people “opening shops everywhere” to cater for their own communities, from convenience stores to hairdressing salons, not realising that is exactly what the Indian-Asians have done for years! Talk about double standards. Trevor the taxi driver agreed and added that the EU workers were taking jobs away from local people because they were prepared to work for lower wages, often for cash jobs in the construction industry. Apart from the craic however, it was quite interesting to hear the candid views of the street-wise trio, because it made me think about the important role EU immigrants have to play in Ireland.
Disillusioned with the economic problems of their own Countries, Ireland has become a land of opportunity for these workers, often well qualified and experienced individuals with the desire to succeed. Just as my own parents had come to the UK with nothing from East Africa in 1967 and worked their way up through sheer hard work and dedication, it is not difficult to understand the desire of thousands of like-minded individuals wanting to do the same. For example, out of the 88,000 jobs created here in the period from March to May, 48,000 (or 55%) were taken by foreigners, of which 34,000 were young EU immigrants between the ages of 25 and 35. Ireland is creating three times more jobs per day than any of its EU counterparts, with over half these jobs going to immigrants. This means that in 30 years time, there will be more foreign workers than Irish workers. Is that a bad thing?
If you listen to some people, they’d tell us that wages will be driven down and people will lose their jobs because employers will have the luxury of choosing the EU workers with lower wage expectations and indigenous Irish workers will suffer as a result. What do you think? Let’s look at Germany to find the answer, where there is effectively a two-tier labour market, allowing immigrants to take up the low-wage, low-productivity service jobs, while ensuring that the Germans maintain their high productivity, high-tech and well paid jobs. This has worked very well and shows that the two tier concept can and does work. Increasingly falling birth rates and ageing of the population means that Ireland simply has to follow suit. A valid criticism of this model is that we are creating a two-tier society, but in an open market, people are free to gain skills and experience and so the unskilled, low paid worker has the opportunity to avail of a better and more rewarding career, although a recent Government decision bans Romanian and Bulgarian people from working freely without work permits for 7 years from January 2007.
A recent report by the ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) says that most recent immigrants to Ireland are more highly educated than their Irish counterparts, with over 40% of those who arrived in 2004/5 having a third-level qualification, yet not as highly educated as earlier arrivals. The corresponding figure in the native population is below 30 per cent.
The most recent immigrants are 13% less likely to be in managerial, professional or associate professional occupations, just as the two-tier model suggests. For earlier arrivals, however, the gap is lower, and for those who arrived between 1995 and 1999, there is no gap. Accordingly, the report suggests that immigrants may assimilate over time by learning English or other useful skills, while it could be that those who arrived earlier but did not succeed in the labour market left, thereby leaving a pool of "successful" immigrants. The continued growth of migrant workers to Ireland is also important in stabilising the property market. All of us are aware of the slowdown, which had to happen as property prices on average have tripled in just 10 years and outstripped income ratios to an impossible level and virtually excluded many first time buyers. With GDP (Gross Domestic Product), at 5.9% this year reducing to 5% in 2007, job creation is also set to reduce from 91,000 in 2006 to less than 71,000 in 2007, all pointing to an economic slowdown.
However, most commentators agree that to avoid a serious fall, domestic demand must be maintained, from housing to retail and EU workers are set to do just that for us.
Jas Kalsi, BSc(Eng)Hons, MBA is a Management Consultant and Past President of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce |
