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TV SHOW PROVES THAT MIGRANT WORKERS ARE KEY TO UK ECONOMY

May 3, 2010 at 3:55 pm | Posted in Goldteam News | Leave a comment
Tags: CIPD, food industry, migrant, migrant workers

The recent BBC television programme “The Day the Immigrants Left” shows just how vital migrant workers are to the UK economy.  The programme focused on the Cambridgeshire town of Wisbech which has a large migrant workforce and tried an experiment to see if the UK could cope without migrant workers.  Four employers were persuaded to swap their migrant workers with unemployed locals with interesting results. Of the twelve people, five didn’t turn up for work and two of those who did were late and distinctly unenthusiastic.  One, who has been unemployed for five years said:  “I won’t do a job I don’t find very interesting.  I do feel a little pressurised to find a job, but it’s not to the point that I can just take any job.” It is little wonder then that firms continue to hire migrant workers to plug skill gaps and in fact the recent CIPD labour market outlook survey has found that around one in five employers have recruited migrant workers in the last three months. And without migrant workers there is no way that we would be able to fulfil our client’s requirements in the food industry!