Paying extra to employ 'foreign' workers

yorkshire I would accept your point if there was huge unemployment in the UK, but there isn't. In fact we are as near to full employment as it is possible to get.

So British workers are definately not being done out of a job far from it. Immigrant workers help our economy to expand and bring much needed revenue.

Exactly Yorkshiregel some companies only advertise abroad without trying to recruit here, so doubling the charge could be a good idea.
Not all policies in manifestos are implemented ( for either Party) in reality.

Someone suggested on facebook that the appalling Conservative Manifesto was due to the fact that May does not want to be reelected because of the impossible mess of Brexit, I am sure it was a joke but it does give food for thought.

£100k split between two children still makes a very tidy house deposit @moxeyns. But really, I know it's become harder to get into the property market but who waits for their parents to die before starting? You're mostly middle-aged before that happens now.

no, I think you will find it is a joke!
Presumably an 'appalling ' manifesto is one that unlike Labours that promises all things to all men( and women) the Conservative manifesto has decided to stick to realistic policies.With Brexit to come, there could be difficult times ahead, at least in the short term, so splashing the cash is not a good idea.

I agree that anything that encourages firms to employ British workers first can only be a good thing.
The firm my DH works for has 98% foreign programmers- mostly from India, Pakistan & Turkey.A friend of ours has a newly graduated son who cannot get a job in this line of work. Even with the levy it is still far cheaper to employ foreign workers.
Bring back proper apprenticeships & encourage school leavers to take these & forget this daft idea that everyone has to go to Uni.

Yes Anya I "ought" to find work, and it's all very well for people to get on their high horses and pontificate, but in the real world I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. As well as already having a strong background in admin. I retrained as a legal secretary, but legal firms don't want to employ older people. I've tried all kinds of things, even cleaning, but then most of my hours were taken off me and given to a Polish girl that they could employ more cheaply. Despite the propaganda, some of us do actually want to work, because lets face it, what kind of life can you have on £73 a week? Have you ever lain awake at night worrying about how you're going to maintain your home, let alone keep your car on the road without which any chance of employment becomes vanishingly slim? No I don't think that anyone who hasn't gone through that has any right to be judgemental.

Craftycat I could not agree more. Some children are better using their hands. Some are academic and some are more hands on. To close the Technical colleges imo was a stupid idea. We need engineers, we need plumbers, we need brick-layers, we need computer experts and we need nurses. We should invest in our children which this Government says it is. In reality it is only investing until they reach 16yrs then the support falls off. If they want to go to University and are good enough to do a proper course (not a course on David Beckham) they have to find £50 thousand from somewhere, but that is ONLY if they are ENGLISH. This is blatant racial discrimination which is BANNED both by the EU and our own Government, yet they turn a blind eye. Let the plebs find the money as long as our own are sorted! I think it is appalling, my children were lucky enough to get a University education, and I think their children should be able to as well. How is that possible for anyone if they have more than one child now?

I think it is about time they started putting British workers at the front of the queue.

What does that actually mean, Yorkshiregel?

Why would any company choose to run on unskilled or wrongly skilled workers or are you suggesting those people are available as that is not what has been reported by companies?

If we shut down the country so much that the companies are not allowed to decide who they employ they will either shrivel and close or move elsewhere.

Wombat - wrong thread!

Well said Womble54! I do sympathise. Some people are desperate enough to sign on for a zero contract, but they do not realise that some days they might not be needed to work and so they do not get paid. They are not allowed to do other work because they have to be 'available' if needed. My own son was made redundant from a job in Marketing which he enjoyed. He was Management level. He needed work to feed his family so he took a 6 month temp job with the NHS. He completely changed his mind and was kept on and has worked himself up back in to Management. He loves his job and it just shows if you are determined you will succeed. I hope the NHS gets sorted out. We need it and imo we should be grateful to the older generation who were there at its birth and who have contributed to it all these years. Now they need it they are being refused knee operations and such like, which you get when you are older, and Mrs May et al should be ashamed of themselves the way the they are determined to privatise the NHS. I hope my son is not made redundant again.

Craftycat look up Elite apprenticeships - they exist and are growing but like all these things take time to work through. It does not have to be degree or apprenticeship one can include or lead to the other.

This 'daft idea' about university level education is not frowned on by the programmers from India you talk about - they will have moved heaven and earth in some cases to get that level of education - and they have jobs.

The world has changed and looking backwards usually means you walk into something you don't like or want.

What does that mean GracesGranMK2? It means investing in our own youngsters first, foreigners second. Yes, I agree that we need some skilled people to fill jobs, but I do not agree with taking the brightest and the best from other countries who would be better off if they stayed to make their own country better.

People are being conned by companies saying they cannot fill the jobs they advertise here. Fruit pickers and hotel workers for example. What they are not saying is that they only advertise overseas because they know full well that people say from Poland will work for less, in other words they can get staff to come and work for a pittance. If the jobs are not advertised here, which they are not being, then who knows that they are vacant?

Another thing this Government, and others before them, are doing is turning a blind eye to companies who pay less than the minimum wage. Why? Because that brings wages down right across the board, and if you can bring wages down then you can reduce the pension they get when the employees retire.

Yes, I did take Economics at college!

One GREAT thing that the Conservatives have done is to make more apprenticeships available. I think that is wonderful.

What I do not agree with is that they are using apprenticeships to make their mark, but they are stopping working class English students from going to University unless their parents re-mortgage their homes or something to pay the bill. We should be providing both! Our children are our country's future. No child should have a £50 thousand bill around his/her neck. That means they will have to think whether they want to go to University or get married and have a family and a home of their own, because they cannot afford both. NOT FAIR when other countries in this United Kingdom get their education FREE or at a lower rate. It is DISCRIMINATION!

We still train bricklayers (difficult to get any apprenticeships as we are not building very much), plumbers and engineers. No one is pontificating but understanding modern careers, education and training and the actual jobs that are available is essential if you are going to help those who are looking at their future.

Marketing is the most competitive market you can go into with huge numbers leaving university and attempting to go down that route. Competitive means people better than you will be competing for the same job. Telling children to do anything they want to is one thing but if they want to be paid for it they actually need to find an area where someone is willing to pay and pay for their level of skill. This seems to be exactly what your son has done Yorkshiregel. People no longer go into an organisation expecting the organisation to make their career (or they shouldn't) - again, if you wish to understand look up protean and boundryless careers. Knowledge is strength

There is not a problem of unemployment Yorkshiregel - the Tories keep telling us about it so what is your problem? If we are filling vacant jobs with people who are currently better skilled upskilling is the only answer to the whinging about little Johnny not getting the job he wanted when the nasty foreigner did.

It's a line been touted by the hard right, Nuttal and Farage. The facts do not stand up - as simple as that.

Educating our youngsters to a high degree will give them the opportunity to get a decent job with a decent wage.

If you lived where I do you would see that every little space, including green belt, is being used for houses. It is getting so that our town is almost recognisable to what it used to be, houses going up everywhere! We need our own youngsters educated properly so they can fill the jobs to build what is needed, not make it easy for people to come here and fill the jobs.

When desperate people are taking part-time or zero contract jobs I think there is a BIG problem with employment. Most people need a full-time job to be able to pay their bills these days. If you make full-time jobs in to part-time jobs then the employees do not have the same rights, they are paid less and their pensions go down.

zero hours contracts are everything to do with worker exploitation and non state interference, not immigrant labour.

Its about helping all those poor Brits on zero hours contracts getting full-time jobs (40 plus hours a week) even if they are unfit, require training, demand minimum wage and have to travel to share lodgings while working from job to job.

They may even be able to keep the computers up to date.

Buyers, parents and our government agencies have to make sure their suppliers do not exploit their employees.

I've not been paying much attention to the various manifesto claims but I've a feeling there's some confusion here. As I understand it, if an employer takes on someone who has no permission to work in the UK, or is an illegal entrant to the UK, then that employer is liable to be fined £2,000 for each individual that has been illegally employed. It's easy enough for a prospective employer to ask to see a passport which should contain the necessary authorisation.

I speak as someone who until recently worked in the visa section of a UK embassy. This rule has been in place for several years now so I don't see it as anything new.

But the employer can't then carry on employing the illegal worker. This must be something different.

Yet another example of the Tories wanting to do away with the NHS???

I'm pretty sure this will be implemented and it will have a big impact in many sectors pushing costs/prices up
- NHS - does not train enough people to meet needs - nursing applications have dropped sharply since the government abolished bursaries - so even less money for patient care
- care homes - many overseas staff so prices will rise to people funding themselves more
- agriculture - increased food prices if it cost £2,000 before a cabbage has been picked

Perhaps there will be demand from UK workers to work in care homes or pick crops - but it seems unlikely