A class united

Migrant labour in the UK is undoubtedly becoming higher profile now. We read calls for businesses to employ more British workers while companies defend their priviledge to employ "foreigners".
In some parts of the UK the influx of migrant workers may well have resulted in increased unemployment for existing workers and appears to be putting a downward pressure on wages in some job sectors. For workers fighting over crumbs in lower wage unskilled jobs, the temptation to blame your unemployment or wage level on foreign labour may be strong. But nevertheless such views are false. The blame lies elsewhere. In order to stay profitable, UK employers are demanding cheap labour. It makes good business sense to welcome cheap labour from overseas – you didn't have to pay for its education, and after you have exploited it for a lifetime, you still won’t have to pay its pension. The existence of an army of people desperate for any job they can get permits British capitalism to make the most of their cheap and flexible labour power. The worst victims are Britain’s underpaid - easy to sack - second class workforce of migrant labour, a world of gangmasters, zero hour contracts, the minimum wage or less and practically no employment rights.

And while the free movement of labour is restricted, capital is of course expected to roam the globe looking out for ever better rates of exploitation. Multimillionaires and billionaires, thanks to their exploitation of the working class are free to settle anywhere. The patriotism of the master class, like their self-proclaimed philanthropy is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits the capitalist’s love of his country withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. He has no scruples in the matter of displacing the native worker with the “migrant”, provided that it pays him – any more than he hesitates to export the job by out-sourcing or displacing his staff with new technology . It is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are their real enemies.

Migrant labourers working for a pittance in lands which themselves have high domestic unemployment; migrant skilled workers enjoying artificially high wages in lands where local graduates can't find work; production decimated in many developed countries because overseas underdeveloped countries have won the competition for the lowest wages, this illogicality stares us all in the face. We know it makes no sense for any of us as a class, a class of workers, or would-be workers. It will be natural for anyone considering this topic to focus first on their own country and, in particular, their own locality but with or without the migrant workers there would still be unemployment, homelessness and poverty.

If we could only approach the problem from a different angle. "Not enough jobs to go around!" This is the mantra. But, of course, there is plenty of work to be done! Look around where you live. Houses in disrepair because private owners are without the means for proper upkeep and public housing have over-spent their budget leaving behind slums which should have been cleared long ago. Pot-holes in the roads. Leaks in classroom ceilings. Grubby town centres. Old, sub-standard, decaying infrastructure of all kinds. Shoddy public transport services. Health and education provision woefully inadequate with insufficient trained personnel. These examples can be expanded ad infinitum for every neighbourhood.

The World Socialist Movement chose its title purposefully. We have no national axe to grind. We side with no nation or government. We have no time for border controls. We recognise that the world over, workers must do what they can individually and collectively to survive and resist capitalism. In many parts of the world that means escaping the tyranny of political terror or economic poverty. Workers should try and resist taking sides in the battles of the economic blocs who just happen by accident of birth to be named on the front of your passport. You must not blame another worker for your poverty. The present system is revealing to the workers of all countries, that between worker and worker we are bound together by the common ties of our class position – a common class interest.

Meantime, Anthony Steen, chair of the Human Trafficking Foundation, condemned the government's forthcoming strategy against human trafficking, accusing it of being more concerned with immigration control than caring for slavery victims. Planned changes to the domestic workers' visa they say threatens to put migrant domestic workers back into bonded labour and slavery in the UK, as indicative of official policy. Concerns are also rising that UK border agency staff are encouraged to stress the immigration status of trafficked victims instead of the crime against them.