New "Teal" politician and economic growthist, Allegra Spender, promotes immigration rates of 220,000 p.a. over the next 2 years, (ABC RN 9 June 22) in the context of also promoting reduction in carbon emissions, rising energy prices, and economic growth.
Ex-UK Parliamentarian, Michael Heaver, in this video, says the UK has seen significant wage-growth in various industries, with an interruption to mass migration. He notes that Boris Johnson is currently calling for industry to stop relying on mass migration and to invest money in local industry and wages instead. Employers and Labor are, however, again calling for higher immigration. This comes in the light of the current UK crisis in petrol delivery which has seen drivers queuing for hours, even days, to fill their cars or containers, because lorry drivers are working for better wages outside that industry. Comments on the video indicate low trust that Boris Johnson will actually honour his words, however the topics covered in the video are informative and highly relevant to Australia. Michael Heaver comments, “And, rather than siding with British workers, it seems labour, as with a lot of business, their immediate knee-jerk reaction, to every issue in the labour market, is not to look at to raise wages and invest in the UK domestic workforce. It’s simply to go for cheap foreign labour. Now, this looks to be a major theme for the Conservatives going into their conference …”
Two thousand “Temporary” Foreign Workers ---Chinese miners---are coming to extract coal from northeastern British Columbia, Canada, close to three First Nations reserves who suffer unemployment rates over 70% !
Two thousand “Temporary” Foreign Workers ---Chinese miners---are coming to extract coal from northeastern BC, close to three First Nations reserves who suffer unemployment rates over 70% !
Government and industry tell us that we don’t have enough trained workers of our own. But maybe the real problem is that our workers are not trained to accept substandard wages for hard, dangerous work, that neither government nor industry has taken a serious inventory of our labour needs or resources, and that they are gripped by a quick-fix mentality that looks overseas rather than investing in the training of our own people, particularly of native youth.
And there is another elephant in the room. The primary question. Why the mad rush to “develop”, mine, drill and transport every resource in sight? Whose agenda are we following? The long term needs of Canadians, or the shareholders of foreign corporations and revenue-hungry debt-addicted governments? What becomes of the extra millions we import in a generation, when the ‘gold rush’ is over?
These miners are being brought in as “Temporary” Foreign Workers. A labour category whose numbers have tripled in just six years. But as the saying goes, there is nothing so permanent in Canada as a “Temporary Foreign Worker”. The trade union establishment, in fact, wants to smooth their transition into formal immigrant status. This reflects the ambition to “bring them into the union”, rather than to protect Canadian workers by demanding their expulsion. One often gets the impression that unions care more growing their dues-paying membership base and about exploited temporary workers than about the jobs of Canadians that those workers have displaced. Whatever happened to the ancient understanding that the best friend of the working man (or woman) is a tight labour market?
Until recently, it was the cross-party consensus that Canada should have a ‘tap on, tap off’ immigration policy. That is, Canada would open the gates wider when times were good and foreign workers were needed, but close them when times were tough, as they are now. That consensus was blown apart two decades ago when the Mulroney government dramatically jacked up immigration quotas to unprecedented levels, motivated not by economic considerations but by political ones. Namely, the desire of the Conservative government to woo ethnic voters away from the Liberal Party by expanding immigration. Since then, successive governments have kept up that unwarranted intake for fear of chasing ethnic voters away into the embrace of the opposition parties eager to capture their loyalty.
The truth is, we don’t need to dig up and ship out our resources at breakneck speed. We don’t need to follow the classic boom-and-bust cycle that has cursed our resource economy for a century. And we don’t need to recklessly import millions of foreign workers to pursue that kind of roller-coaster economic model.
The aim of public policy should not be to get rich quick, but secure economic stability over the long haul. The word “sustainable” has been abused beyond meaning. But nonetheless, it applies here. It should be clear that a sustainable economy is better than one that rises like rocket, and then crashes. A sustainable economy for a sustainable population level.
Tim Murray,
October 27, 2012
Why doesn't the government cut land costs? High costs of land, and the resources it carries - energy and water - are responsible for our failing economy. The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories. The greatest costs to workers are the rents they pay for personal accommodation. Small and medium-sized businesses pay both for their business premises and for their personal accommodation. Manufacturing in Australia is losing out to high rents and housing costs. Wages must go up to satisfy the malignant effect of land-speculation, which government continues to encourage against our common welfare. But, why don't they just cut the land-costs? Stop pushing up property prices by reducing immigration and you won't have to put wages up. Business will become competitive on the world market again, because most of its profits won't go on rent of premises. Let's get rid of the property developers. Let's outlaw land speculation. [Title changed from "Cut land-costs, not wages. Down with property developers, Up with workers!" on 9 Oct 2011.]
We hear that over 90% of small businesses quickly go broke. Some of you may assume that this is because they are all incompetent. That would mean that you have a low opinion of your fellow Australian and that you haven't considered the costs that operate in our society and are causing our factories to close.
The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories.
Do we ever hear the Liberal Party or the Labor Party say anything about this?
No.
But land costs and rent costs erode profit margins and drive everyone except the major corporations out of business.
The major corporations (which include newspapers, banks and developers) invest in land and are responsible for high rents and mortgages. They constantly lobby against ordinary Australians for more immigrants to keep those costs high. They are in the business of putting the rest of us out of business.
Why is the government ignoring that land cost factors completely dwarf all the other factors causing Australian manufacturing and most other small business to founder?
The public service is bringing in contractors in order to keep wages down. Once they did not have the right to do this. Once they had to negotiate fairly.
We are losing our rights to decent wages and conditions at the same time that big business is forcing up rents and housing costs.
The mass media is full of nonsense about how the economy cannot afford for wage rises. The mass media has nothing to say about the huge iceberg our economy is running up against in rising land prices. It only talks about how a tiny minority of people who have invested in second properties are able to sell their houses for more money. It says nothing about how business fails and people become homeless due to these rising costs.
Now I hear of how state governments are talking about bringing in contractors to undercut cleaners' wages. Cleaners are arguably among the most poorly paid workers in Australian industry. They work very hard and have little status.
The same thing is happening to drivers, with local governments considering colluding to introduce strike-breakers in order to stop industrial action to negotiate small wage rises in another ill-paid industry.
Why is it always those who can least afford it who must bear the brunt of our ill-run economy, whilst the CEOs and head-kickers get huge wages for simply being mean and greedy?
Please send this cartoon to Julia and Wayne and your local politicians and ask them, "Why don't you just cut the land costs?"
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