thomas davison
Party Leader
Joined: 03 Jun 2005
Posts: 4018
Location: northumberland
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 Posted: Mon Jul 02, 2012 8:01 am Post subject: NEARLY 50% OF JOBS AT OLYMPICS WENT TO FOREIGNERS, |
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Foreign workers take nearly half of Olympic Park jobs: So much for promises to employ British staff!Four in ten of the jobs created went to foreign workers
Around 18,400 jobs out of 46,000 went to people abroad
By Louise Eccles
PUBLISHED: 00:35, 2 July 2012 | UPDATED: 07:42, 2 July 2012
Almost half the workers employed to build the London 2012 Olympic Park were from overseas.
Despite promises from ministers that the Games would create thousands of jobs for Britons, around four in ten of the jobs created went to foreign workers.
Figures obtained by the Mail show that approximately 18,400 jobs out of 46,000 went to people from abroad, especially Eastern Europe.
Costly: The Olympic Park was meant to give East London a skills legacy
At the same time British workers struggled to find work in the construction industry during the economic crisis.
The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) had pledged to employ local people, creating a skills legacy for East London in line with Gordon Brown�s promise of �British jobs for British workers�.
But Olympic bosses admitted last night that although 98 per cent of the contracts awarded for the project went to British-registered companies, they had no control over where those firms sourced their staff.
The admission will come as a blow to taxpayers, who had hoped to reap a long-lasting economic benefit from their �9.3billion investment in the Olympic Park project.
Business leaders pointed to a chronic manual skills shortage in the UK, but critics said it appeared contractors had merely sought cheaper labour from elsewhere.
When the Mail visited the Athletes� Village in the Olympic Park last week, a sign for workers was written in Polish only and translates as �Keep door closed at all times�.
Speaking their language: The sign in Polish telling workers to close the door
Promises: Despite assurances that the Games would create thousands of jobs for Britons, around four in ten of the jobs created went to foreign workers
When asked why it was not also written in English, an employee said: �I suppose it is because most of the workers here are Polish.
�The contractors wrote that for their staff.�
Former British diplomat Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of the think-tank Migration Watch, said: �If the ODA and its contractors have gone overseas to look for cheaper labour then that is a lamentable act.�
According to figures, only 60 per cent of staff working on the site were British.
More than a quarter � 28 per cent � were from the EU and 12 per cent were from other countries.
The ODA said almost a fifth of the workers were �local people� employed from the five host boroughs of Newham, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest.
But a loophole means �local� can include anyone with an address in the area, including new migrants staying in hotels and B&Bs.
Romanians made up the largest foreign worker group at 8 per cent of the workforce on the Olympic site, followed by the Republic of Ireland, Lithuania, Poland and Bulgaria.
The breakdown was collated by the ODA last December when 8,465 people were working on the site.
An ODA spokesman said: �We have met our targets to train and recruit local residents and those out of work.
�However, while the ODA has encouraged companies to employ more local residents, recruitment decisions are ultimately taken by our contractors � 98 per cent of whom are registered in the UK.�
We want to see the end of work agencies in this country, it is they who bring in foreign workers, fill in the forms for them because they cannot read English and keep British workers on the dole, SHUT THEM ALL DOWN NOW AND WATCH BRITISH PEOPLE GET BRITISH JOBS AGAIN. |
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