Give migrant workers a fair go!

Source: stuff.co.nz

Whenever there is an economic downturn migrant workers cop it in the neck.

The welcome mat is put down when employers want skilled or unskilled workers in short supply but the rug is pulled away quickly when jobs become scarce.

The latest manifestation of this is a complaint from welder Stephen Bovett that he and other New Zealand workers were made redundant from New Plymouth firm MCK Metals while Filipino welders on work permits were kept on.

Stephen Bovett is furious and most of us will have sympathy for his plight. He has two young children and a mortgage. If anyone is going to be made redundant he says it should be the Filipinos. The issue has been taken up by Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman who says Stephen and his co-workers may not have been treated fairly.

It appears the Filipino workers were employed to do specialist welding but the company later applied for a variation in their agreement with the Department of Labour so these migrant workers could do general welding work. The department agreed and two weeks later the company showed Stephen and others the door with migrant workers taking over their work.

A similar situation developed at CWF Hamilton in Christchurch recently when 29 New Zealand workers were made redundant while migrant workers on work permits were kept on.

The unions involved have taken the side of New Zealand workers and no doubt public opinion will be with this view. But it’s a narrow parochial view which squarely misses the most important point and targets migrant workers who are only here to earn money to feed their families.

Those to blame are neither the migrant workers nor the New Zealanders who are losing their jobs.

Consider this for a moment. Most employers think the free market is their gift from God and the laws of supply and demand are writ in heavenly stone. Until, of course, it doesn’t suit them.

When the supply of labour diminishes, as it has this past decade of low unemployment, then wages should increase. But look at pay rises for New Zealanders in recent years and there is no evidence of any change in our low-wage economy.

The two main obstacles to wage rises are our pro-employer, anti-worker laws which make it very difficult for workers to negotiate collectively, particularly across companies in the same industry, and the readiness of government’s to bring in workers from overseas on low rates of pay.

Most areas of the economy are involved. Orchardists, Southland farmers, Auckland hotels and security companies are just some who have persuaded the government to allow migrant workers in to plug so-called skill shortages. Often it’s simply so employers can continue to enjoy some of the lowest wages in the developed world.

(You might remember these same employers stood by and applauded as National destroyed apprenticeships in the 1990s and then wondered why we have a skills shortage 10 years later).

With this background it’s deeply disappointing to see New Zealand workers and unions attack migrant workers as though they are somehow to blame for New Zealanders losing their jobs when the economy dives. Once here they should be accepted with the same rights to earn a living as anyone else. Don’t migrant workers’ kids have the same right to be fed as New Zealand kids?

Unfortunately the attack on migrant workers is a pattern we’ve seen here many times before.

In the 1970s the government cracked down on Pacific Island overstayers when unemployment rose. The government and employers were very happy to make use of their unskilled labour in the previous decade but a thinly veiled campaign of racism against them was led by politicians as unemployment rose in the 1970s. The infamous “dawn raids” and random stopping of brown-skinned people by the police was a routine part of the Pacific experience of living in Auckland.

The fault doesn’t rest with Stephen Bovett but neither does it rest with the Filipino welders. It rests instead with an economic policy which sees workers as a resource to be used and abused – welcomed when there’s a skills shortage or the need to keep New Zealand wages low but then shunned as soon as an economic downturn arrives.

These migrant workers have often spent their life savings to get to New Zealand in the first place after paying huge fees to various parasitic agents who specialise in trafficking workers for capitalist enterprises. The simple fact is they are here and they deserve a fair go just as did our parents, grandparents or earlier antecedents who themselves were migrants to New Zealand.

Instead of seeing them as the enemy our unions need to show leadership in recognising there is common cause between New Zealand workers and migrant workers. Both groups are victims of uncertainty and exploitation in the unreliable world of the so-called free market. Recognising this is the first step to change.