Immigration & Wages

Last week several of us had a chance to meet together with a group of Romanian worshippers at a local church, and to enjoy their hospitality. This week I had an interesting chat with a local Caversham man who was commenting on the way that immigrants are driving down wages for skilled labourers, and wondering how youngsters would manage in the future.

Many of our Romanian hosts were skilled workers over here on short-term contracts, concerned about their families and the lack of stability which goes with that lifestyle. I could sympathise with that having been a 'forces kid', moving every three years during my childhood; although I do think that there is a huge benefit to travel. Some years ago I had a next-door neighbour in her late seventies who had never been further than Tilehurst, just the other side of Reading, and only went there once because it was too strange! Their worshipping community (they don't have their own church building) has been steadily growing over the years, as more Romanians have moved over here to work.

A problem in Caversham seems to be that people are coming over from the poorer parts of Eastern Europe (such as Romania) who are skilled labourers, have no market for their skills in their home country, come to Caversham where there is work, but offer silly rates for jobs just to get some of that work (I was told some are quoting £60-£70 per day for skilled building work, which isn't sustainable).

In spite of some of the scummier parts of our press, I see no sign of Eastern Europeans coming over as 'benefit tourists'. Employment rates are generally not too bad around Reading, so I don't think there's any real problem with recent immigrants picking off the baseline, minimum wage jobs, shutting out unskilled locals.

As a small business myself, though, I can see the point about unfair, unsustainable competition; although I would point out that there is probably a lot more unfair competition to small businesses coming from multi-nationals who don't pay either fair wages or fair taxes (Amazon and Starbucks spring to mind).

What to do? I would start by saying these are all good people: Romanians and local. There is no place for language and attitudes which dehumanise or degrade fellow human beings. Some of the British press fails dismally there, and one or two of our political parties are irresponsible in the way they manipulate this issue. I would also point out that there are a lot of British skilled workers working overseas, in Europe and beyond, on both short and long term contracts - it's a two-way street.

That said, what can be done? It seems to me that this is a problem which is real but not sustainable. Family accommodation around here is ludicrously expensive - owned or rented - so no-one can continue charging uneconomic prices for long. Essentially it looks to me like a classic 'market entry': you start with low prices to build a clientèle then put them up to realistic levels as you become established.

The problem really is a lack of stability. The EU has grown too fast in recent years; it needs to take time to digest what it has already got before growing any more. The various restrictions on movement after some of the Eastern European countries joined merely had the effect of drawing out the pain. We need to give society, and businesses, time to settle down.

So my suggestions would be to block EU expansion, encourage free movement within the EU (to stop the build up of suppressed demand), put effort into enforcing payment of taxes and fair wages by large businesses and small, locals and foreign workers (not necessarily a popular move with local small businesses, but important to level the playing field), and unblock the building of the houses needed for the unmet demand (thereby both growing the demand for skilled labour and moving housing costs to a more manageable level).

I don't see any party in tomorrow's election whose policies (such as they are) come even close to these. I will vote tomorrow because voting is important, but I - like many others - despair at the lack of real choice in UK elections so far this century.

Politics & The Bible I

“When people say that the Bible and politics don’t mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading.” - Desmond Tutu.

I get Tutu's point but - in this run up to the 2015 UK general election - it is important to be a little more nuanced than that, I think.

In Old Testament times, in Israel and Judea, religion and politics were closely intertwined: their scripture was also their legal system (much like Sharia in some countries today), and their rulers claimed to be divinely appointed. It didn't go well, hence the prophets 'speaking truth to power' ... and being persecuted for it.

In New Testament times Christianity was too weak to have political influence. That didn't go well either: Jesus was crucified by those who did have political influence and power, and the early church was heavily persecuted.

Oddly enough that doesn't stop the New Testament's writings from being heavily political. I've spoken elsewhere about the political relevance of terms like 'goods news', 'Christ', and 'son of god'; but it is also true that Paul's letters were, in places, extremely political. As a spokesperson for faith without secular power, Paul could not directly challenge the political 'hot potatoes' of the day, but he could and did challenge the underlying suppositions.

On example is that the whole of Roman and Greek society depended totally upon slavery - it would have ceased to function without it. Nothing Paul could say was going to change that. However, slavery in practice depends upon the idea that slave-owners are superior to their slaves. Paul taught that in Jesus there is no difference, that all are of equal worth: slave or free, male or female, Jew, Greek or foreigner (see for example his letter to the Galatian Church).

This remains political in today's world, nearly two thousand years later! Just think of debates about immigration in Europe and in North America, rights of women in South Asia and the Middle East, domestic and sexual slavery in Saudi Arabia, London, Thailand and many, many other places.

There is an enormous amount about politics in the Bible, but nothing - inevitably, if you think about it - about party politics.

In the 2012 London Assembly elections there were candidates standing for the 'Christian Peoples Alliance', a newish party supposedly representing a Christian viewpoint in politics. Inevitably they didn't actually represent very many individual Christian's viewpoints when it came down to it - they certainly don't represent mine - and they only gained 1.8% of the vote, getting no seats.

On the other hand, all three of the current main parties had MPs in the recently dissolved parliament who are explicitly Christians. Indeed there is an all-party parliamentary group called Christians in Parliament, who share a common faith and common belief in the Bible whilst also holding a variety of political viewpoints. They clearly believe that faith and politics not only can mix, but that they should mix. Yet they mix them in different ways. How can that be?

I'll go into the question of what the Bible says versus the policies of different political parties in the next post, but I just want to finish this one with another quote from Desmond Tutu:

“If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”