Tory immigration rules use Brexit to reshape UK labour market - low-paid & zero-hour jobs for Brits; steady high paid jobs for foreigners. 1/
1. employers can’t recruit very low-paid workers from EU.
Employer can only employ current UK legal residents (or UK/Irish citizens from abroad)
OR
recruit from abroad with contractual min £20K salary 2/
No cap on employers recruiting high/medium/low-ish paid workers (but not on zero hours or as contracted self-employed) 3/
Only British citizens and residents can be employed on zero hours contract. Only they can be paid less than £20K
Brits become the low-paid labour pool. 4/
- strong pushback from biz in services, distrib’n & food industries. They depend on insecure short-term low-paid
- biz closures & rising prices in those sectors
- rising demand for irregular workers
- more pressure on Gov/officials to drive people off benefits 5/
British? You can be legally employed on zero hours contract at £8.72 p/h
Not enough British residents to fill the jobs? Recruit from abroad - but that requires guaranteed salary of 20K = £9.85 (40 hr week) 7/
So we’ll likely see employers switching from zero hours contracts & paying min £20K (so they can recruit from abroad) but offering same conditions to British residents (because of law). 9/
- rise in very low wages & less zero hours contracts (in sectors which need new foreign workers)
- therefore *increased* proportion of British resident workers in those sectors, because work conditions more attractive. 10/
What does this mean in practice? 11/
Bigg boost to the English-teaching & examining market. 12/
Crucial control will be the “skills levels” > /15
Gov policy on “skills” isn’t published afaics. But workers will need to A-level equivalent qualifications gov.uk/government/new… 18/
*undefined yet 20/
Is that the Brexit we voted for? 23/
So they’re still dragging wages down gov.uk/government/new… 26/
But it’s also a “workers rights” policy that could affect millions of British residents. 27/27