UK/FILE: British unions say EU migrants are benefit to British economy and should be able to work freely in Europe

British trade union representatives have dismissed claims that immigration brings little economic benefit to Britain. At a time when Britain is battling with its response to large numbers of immigrants from the European Union, campaign group 'Migrationwatch' said that any economic growth from recent inflows of cheap labour from eastern Europe were almost outweighed by the proportionate rise in population. But the government and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said immigration had brought real benefits to the economy. Net levels of immigration to Britain reached 292,000 in 2005 and have trebled since Labour came to power in 1997, Migrationwatch said. It said foreign workers were reducing pay rates by accepting lower wages, prompting many of the unemployed to remain on benefits rather than look for work. The accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union on January 1 has added to concerns over immigration after an influx of Poles and other eastern Europeans to Britain following the EU's 2004 expansion. Last year, Britain decided to impose restrictions on the number of Bulgarians and Romanians allowed to work in a shift from the open-door policy adopted towards other new EU members. But the government said that migration was good overall for employment and for the economy. A Home Office spokeswoman said that there was a clear consensus that migration had helped the economy to grow and there was little evidence it had increased unemployment. The general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Brendan Barber, agreed there had been economic benefits. "I think we've seen economic growth increase at a faster rate than would have been the case if we hadn't seen that migration. And I don't think there's any doubt that the migrant workers who have come to Britain in recent years have been net contributors to the economy. They've been paying their tax alongside all the rest of us and they've been making no significant drain on our benefits system," he said. But Barber said he was concerned that migrants faced exploitation by employers. "There is plenty of evidence that there are unscrupulous employers who don't even observe, for example, the minimum wage that by law they are required to pay. And that's why we've pressed very strongly for stronger protections for migrant workers, more rigourous enforcement of employment rights, that would be in their interest and in the interest of everybody else too," he said. And he said his organisation's position was one of full support for migrant workers from the European Union. "It's that the idea that workers within the European Union should be free to move, that it should be a market in which workers have rights as well as capital having rights. I think that's a fundamentally important central principle of the European Union, and that's why I want to see that upheld, I don't want to see that tampered with lightly. So, giving workers freedom to move and then proper rights and protection wherever they work within the European Union, that seems to me to be what we should be striving to achieve," he said. A survey of London businesses released by the Confederation of British Industry in December showed that half of employers in the capital rely on migrant labour from the EU to fill skill shortages.

ITN Source | January 5, 2007

Tags:. .accepting. .reducing. .immigration. .immigrants. .freedom