The Construction Worker's Dictionary: E is for... Eastern Europeans

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

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.

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'.

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...)

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!

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?

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.

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...

The Construction Worker's Dictionary