E is for... Eastern Europeans

Right, bit of a sore subject with some, this. So lets get things clear. 

• They're all different...

• Eastern Europeans refers to people from at least 9 countries, and is often used mistakenly to refer to people from the several controls in Central Europe also. Those not from Poland are often described as 'Poles', and more recently (and usually but with the same haunted shudder) 'Romanians'. They do not all know each other.

• No, really, they're ALL different...

• Not only do the 'Poles' share a different national culture from the Bulgarian, Ukranians, and Romanians, but believe it or not, each and every Polish person is no less unique in thought, belief, looks, humour, and work ethic than each individual English trade. Some have just moved over and are learning English a hell of a lot quicker than I did, others have lived here ten years plus, and their children have lives they'd be loathe to leave when as some lesser-minded trades I know hope they'll 'go back'.

• They're not being presented fairly...

• If you're thinking this is all a bit obvious, just take a look at stories in the press about Eastern Europeans. Listen to the talk onsite about Polish firms. Polish trades. Polish chippies. Polish women. A visiting Martian might just think that 'Polish' was a family living up in Burnt Oak who charge low rates for carpentry, steal our jobs and miraculously claim our Jobseekers at the same time. It's racist, it's narrow minded, it's depressingly predictable (see treatment of Caribbean's in 1950s, Irish in 1960s, Indians in 1970s...ad nauseum...)

• They're not harder working...

• Or lazier. Or better trained, or more less trained. Some are the finest trades I've met, some are the worst, just like the English, Irish, Australian, Indian and every other demographic. Honestly, they really are all different!

• They're not here to 'do the jobs we don't want to do'...

• I've heard this refrain so many times it's boring frankly and it's bollocks. If you don't know any English people who are paying the bills through construction work, or shop work or pouring brews at Cafe Nero, then it's more likely that you're friendship circle is, shall we say, limited to more rarefied echelons. There are roughly fourteen million blue collar jobs in the UK and 1.3 million Eastern Europeans - even if they had every single one worked in construction and cafes (which they haven't), that still leaves millions of English people doing the jobs 'we don't want to do'.
• Furthermore (I'm going on about this because it's fucking infuriating!) with that perspective, what happens when Donna from Poland or Valerie from Ukraine decides that actually they'd rather not be a bricklayer, but would like to become a filmmaker, or an insurance broker? Does their right to move here then get nullified because they're doing a job you think English people do want to do?

• Their migration HAS led to a drop in wages for some...

• Let's be brutally honest. In the early 90s a trade was a guarantee of a good income. During the early 00s the average wage either dropped or remained stagnant until it wasn't that anymore. There's loads of reasons for that (maybe the fact that those rarefied echelons now take a bigger slice of the pie than they did in Edwardian times has something to do with but hey-ho). One of these cannot be disputed - because you formerly had fewer people vying for a job and you now have more, the price has gone down and so has the income of trades. 
• It's going to move up again, things are stirring already, but if we're going to argue with a 55 year-old plumber about the evils of immigrants, then please let's not try to pretend this immigration/wages connection doesn't exist because in construction it does. Percy Plumber gets paid less because Pavel Plumber is competing when before he didn't. Percy complains about this, is decried as a bigot for doing so. Doesn't particularly want to listen to the people who call him a bigot anymore.

• We need them in construction...

• That having been said, let's also be brutally honest about where we are now. On every job I work at the ratio of Eastern European Migrant to British By Birth is fifty fifty.  But if those from the continent were to move back tomorrow, the construction industry would collapse and I'd be skint. There are not enough young people in London who are willing to do what's been crudely defined and belittled as manual labour. Eastern Europeans, we need them.

So whatever your views on upcoming elections, the European Union, or anything else... 

• Can we please PLEASE just all get along?

M is for... Mistakes

“At some point on your road you have to turn and start walking back towards yourself. Or the past will pursue you, and bite the nape of your neck, leave you bleeding in the ditch. Better to turn and face it with such weapons as you possess.” 

― Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black

I fucked up today. One of those huge, cost-people-money mistakes, one of those you-couldn’t-have-fucked-up-in-a-worst-place mistakes. It hurts, I’ll admit.

Two things kill about making mistakes onsite. 

The first is that it’s your TRADE. Your craft. Your skill. The reason you’re paid more than some other halfwit. Mistakes are what the cowboys make, you my friend have been a cowboy for five minutes and look at the result.

The second is down to the definition of a mistake. Now I’ve made plenty of errors, I probably average about one every two months - you know, something like the "100-mil-trick", where I measure from the 100mm mark on the tape for extra accuracy but forget to subtract the extra hundred so I have to redraw the line when I double check.  I’d say I'd rate as pretty good at my trade, but even the very best trades, the people I’d take any advice from about the craft, even they must make an error like that every six months.

But a MISTAKE... well that's when you mark a line in the wrong place and THEN cut without checking. The mistake is when what you’ve cut is worth more than a weeks wage. The mistake is when you can’t do anything to rectify it, short of getting new materials. That, my friends, is a fuck up, a catastrophe, a disaster. A Mistake.

So what to do when you make a mistake? The first, the most crucial rule goes back to primary school: 

Always Own Up.

It's often said that people who don’t own up get caught out in the end, lose work in the end. That’s not necessarily true, I know trades who’ve been fucking up for years now who are expert at passing the buck, electricians who can convince you that the lights aren’t working because the plaster is skewed. Those people have negotiated more money than you, arrive later, leave earlier, and have three weeks in the Bahamas booked this year while you’ll be in Bognor Regis Butlins.

No, you must Always Own Up for no better reason than it is good for the soul. You’re not a cowboy, you’re not a worm. You are a TRADE, my friend, site managers sing when they know it's you fixing the tiles / connecting the boiler / cleaning the windows because they know it’ll be done well. They trust you so much, in fact, that were you to lie and get out of Owning Up, it’s very possible you’d get away with it. But you’d know. Your soul would be dimmer, you would march onto the next job with your step that little less sure because you’d know that you were a cowboy for five minutes and then a fraud ever since.

And that brings us to the second rule, tied right up with Always Owning Up, is that you Must Let it Get To You.

What’s that, you cry?! Everyone makes mistakes don’t they? Of course, you’re right, and I’m not advising you give up the day job because your work got ripped out. But this Millennium Dome-sized disaster you’ve perpetuated on the British public shouldn't be repeated, ever. Every time you measure from 100mm there must be a shadow cast across your mind, a Vietnam-style flashback, a Christ that won’t happen again. If it doesn’t get to you then you won’t have that, then there is a real chance it won’t happen again. 

Because of course everyone does make mistakes. Those best trades I mentioned previously, the ones whose advice I’d always listen to gladly? Their heads overflow with mistakes, with errors, with near-misses. They approach a job packed full of cautionary tales. One of the best carpenters I know is mad on screws, uses twice the number most other people do. This chippy is the bollocks, I’d always depend that his door frames are plum, his vanity unit made exactly square. So why does he use more screws than Holloway Prison, like some nervous apprentice? Because he lets his mistakes get to him. Here endeth the lesson. 

And pray for me please. After the mistake I made today I need it.