Come and take our jobs, Britain tells EU workers
BRITAIN is advertising 800,000 jobs to people in the European Union creating more competition for the unemployed at home, it was revealed yesterday.
Almost six in every 10 vacancies on a taxpayer-funded EU website are in the UK, raising questions about the Government’s approach to unemployment.
Germany, the economy of which is the EU’s largest, is second with 267,517 job advertisements, a third fewer.
The total number of vacancies on EURES, the European job mobility portal, as of yesterday was 1,450,490 – so UK jobs up for grabs total more than those in other EU states put together.
Ukip Leader Nigel Farage described the situation as “utterly reprehensible” when UK unemployment remains above 2.5 million.
He said: “The fact that unemployed Britons are being pitted against 500 million people across the EU to get jobs in their own country is utterly reprehensible.
“With two-and-a-half million people unemployed in the UK, of which 958,000 are under 25, every job vacancy counts.
“Yet here we have the EU, which we already grossly overfund, advertising our jobs to people outside the UK and even giving them the upper hand by offering financial support to get interviews here and move here!
“We are essentially paying the EU to give away British jobs.”
The details emerged amid a fierce debate over whether more British jobs should be given to British workers.
Conservative Business Minister Matthew Hancock warned UK companies yesterday that they have a “social duty” to employ young British workers rather than better-qualified immigrants.
He said firms have a responsibility to ensure young people in the communities where they are based are given the opportunity to get a job and get on in life.
Mr Hancock said employers should be prepared to invest in training British staff rather than simply looking for “pure profit”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today show: “As the amount of jobs in the economy grows – we saw the good growth figures yesterday – everybody should be given the chance to get on in life and get one.”
He added: “I’m arguing that it is companies’ social responsibility, it is their social duty, to look at employing locally first.”
His intervention comes amid fears among Tory MPs of a new influx of immigrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria when restrictions on their employment are lifted next year.
The Conservatives are under pressure from Mr Farage’s party, which has been pressing for tighter controls.
But Mr Farage said it was wrong to heap the blame on British firms.
He added: “For the Minister to blame British businesses when he is taxing them in order to send the money to Brussels to fund foreign jobseekers to compete with British workers is so unfair as to be outrageous. We have said boldly from the start we simply cannot improve unemployment in the UK while being a member of the EU.”
The British jobs being advertised in Europe include managerial posts, finance and sales jobs, computing and clerking vacancies.
The huge disparity in job listings will fuel claims that the UK goes too far to go along with EU rules while other countries ignore them when they find them inconvenient.
