to ask how you’re preparing for Brexit?

[CircleSquareCircleSquare]

There is so much uncertainty surrounding what will happen with trade deals and goodness knows what else, that I’m starting to wonder about making some sensible plans.

We have put a stop to some planned works we wanted to do to our house, we have downsized to one car and we grow a small amount of veg. We keep some stocks of food in the house but we have a large family so I never feel like we’d have enough.
We have discussed not taking a holiday this summer and DH is taking every training course possible at work in order to diversify his skills should his industry go tits up.

I’m wondering what decisions you’re making in your homes for what could possibly be a really uncertain time for a few years.

All I can say is thank god we have a team of businessmen and lawyers behind us to negotiate the best deal for the UK.

Truly embarrassing.

EltonJohn, I think a lot of people would have more sympathy for those British construction workers if they hadn’t had a reputation for taking the piss. I remember the days when it was hard to find someone to come and do work to your house and when you did find someone they charged a fortune and often didn’t do a great job, or didn’t show up when they said they were going to. My uncle who works in property management only uses Eastern European contractors now and it’s not just about wages, it’s about reliability and work ethic too. Not great for the British construction workers who have always been hardworking and reliable, but there you go.

2004 Poland joined the EU. It would take a few years for sufficent immigrants to arrive in your area and establish themselves to impact business.

2007 = financial crisis. With a known, quantifiable, major impact on wages.

Romania joined in 2007.

OK, I agree that there can be an element of truth in 'if you don't do this, I'll get the Romanians in', but who's job is it to enforce Employment Law? I can tell you, it's Westminster's job. If you think that post Brexit, there won't be unscrupulous employers, then I think you are a little naive. It's just that the East Europeans will be replaced by black and brown faces from Asia and Africa. To the unscrupulous, it will be all the same to them. Don't rely on people like May and Gove et al. to enforce Employment Law. May's actions are restricted to pontificating on the steps of Downing Street, Gove and Co are happy to see employment protection trashed. More money for them.

Yeah love, you do realise that domestic builders are a tiny, tiny proportion of the UK market. And the lowest skilled one?

Domestic customers want to pay fuck all and get the moon on a stick. No decent British tradesmen really bother with it, because it’s low paid, customers are a pain in the arse and it’s a load of hassle for fuck all money. The reason people couldn’t get reliable British tradesmen for domestic work was because they didn’t want the jobs. Too low paid, too much bother. I don’t think many people would be bothered if it was a few EE tradesmen picking up domestic jobs.

But it’s not. Most of construction involves large sites. A relatively high level of skill including operating large machinery and engagement with the engineering aspect of construction. And it’s nothing to do with work ethic or reliability there. It’s all to do with cheapness and acceptance of poor wages. Particularly when you bear in mind that a lot of the previously apparently marvellous EE tradespeople (in particular the Polish) were jacking it in even pre-Brexit because pay and conditions had deteriorated so badly and were falling so far behind living costs in comparison to Germany.

I’m not talking about your lovely cheeky Polish decorator. I’m talking about Romanians who work unsafe hours in unsafe conditions. You’ve probably walked or driven under cranes holding massive girders in winds far too high to be operating and not even known it. Because safety standards have gone to shit.

Everyone is impacted by globalisation - from the top to the bottom of the employment ladder - blue collar to professional jobs. Take banking - there are 1000s of people from all over the world who would kill for your job, so you have to stay at the top of your game. The world has simply got more competitive.

You might be right, but people should experiences with the domestic market are the reason why so many people don’t have much sympathy with British construction workers having their wages undercut.

Like, in my mum’s case, they remember that time they paid a British builder fifty grand to build a kitchen extension and they never showed up on time, were constantly moonlighting on other jobs, made a couple of fairly huge errors, and then when they were told they wouldn’t be paid until they’d sorted it, turned up with a sledgehammer and smashed up the front step. And then they think of the delightful Polish workers who have done work on the house since, and they shrug.

It’s like people who no longer have any sympathy for tube drivers because they’ve suffered one strike too many and have had enough.

They might have a point, but a lot of people just don’t care anymore.

*What an absolute pile of tripe? Do you remember when Poland ascended to the EU. I do. I was working in quite a low waged job at a University but my DH had a reasonably well paid construction job. Do you remember all that crowing about how marvellous it was that people could get cheap plumbers and electricians now? I do. My public sector colleagues who would be out on the pickets if their pay rises weren’t big enough did an awful lot of it.

Meanwhile, people in the construction industry saw their wages halve overnight as they are mostly self employed. And it wasn’t just the apocryphal plumber on £500,000 a year. It was people on £18/20k or just above. £30k jobs turned into £17k jobs overnight. You can get out your clipboard and say ‘studies show’ and blather on about averages as much as you like. But when people open their pay packets and can see the difference they don’t care. And much of the money which stopped wages plummeting was deliberately inflated public sector pay to hide the fall in the private sector by skewing the averages.

And it’s not just wages either. Don’t want to work 14 hour days? Fine, fuck off, a Romanian will be doing your job Monday. Don’t want to work 7 day weeks? Fine, fuck off, we’ll get a Romanian? Don’t want to work four hours unpaid overtime a day? Fine, fuck off, we’ll get a Romanian. Don’t want to work bank holidays or Saturdays or Sundays for no extra pay? Fine, fuck off, we’ll get a Romanian. Want to follow health and safety regulations which protect you and the general public? Fuck off, Romanians don’t do that. Want to work with people with properly certified skills so you can be assured of the safety and quality of the work involved? Fuck off, that Romanian told me he’s done carpentry before, he’ll do. Want to have on the job training? A permanent job? Regular hours? Opportunities. Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. Romanians don’t ask for that.

Honestly. Some people have no clue*

Totally agree with this.
Although it's nice to know that I must have imagined the lack of work and pay for my DH in construction. The big site jobs being taken over by polish contractors, employing only polish workers. You often see site managers living on site, less outgoings see, so you can pay them a pittance.
It's fuckibg disgusting.

Bit not as disgusting as being told that I fucking imagined it all, and everything about the EU is roses on a stick.

Why do you expect me to care about you losing a few thousand off your house when you've given zero fucks about me for decades.

So Ilove you've basically adnitted you voted for something about which you know nothing?

They might have a point, but a lot of people just don’t care anymore

And therein lies your answer for brexit

So basically what you’re saying Tokyo, is that you have almost no knowledge of the industry and are basing your knowledge of a sector which makes up 10% of the UK economy with your one interaction with a company in a niche market.

And it goes back to my original point, if remainers just reply to the concerns of leavers with ‘we don’t care’ and ‘you’re just lazy/racist/ignorant’, why on earth do you expect leavers to sympathise with your worries and be sensitive to you?

To paraphrase your own post ‘They might have a point, but a lot of people just don’t care anymore’.

Fatty, that might wash for why people don’t care about bankers or other highly paid professionals potentially losing their jobs, but I can’t really see the parallel for why it is OK not to care about Northern Ireland.

I don't think safety standards going to shit is an EU problem. I think it's an enforcement problem, which is down to the UK government. I do think you have a point about UK workforces being priced out of work. I don't think the way to address it is to fuck the while union and take our bar home though.

Plus now I think about it if the UK were better at enforcing safety regs and working time directives etc it would be more difficult to undercut UK workers. So that stuff is not actually a direct result of being in the union.

fatty I think anger that other groups in society had things that they did not fuelled the Brexit vote in areas that were close to me alongside fear/dislike of difference. But these people are not going to get more things, they will end up poorer with worse working conditions and potentially just different groups of people entering the UK. Globalisation is going to stop because we leave the EU regardless of Corbyn's wishes.

Your point abou enforcement is a good one, Mook.

There are plenty of things the government could and should have done to address the issues faced by people who have been disadvantaged as a result of the EU. But they didn’t do anything to help before Brexit, so what makes people think it will be a priority after Brexit?

It’s extraordinary to claim that no British builders want domestic work, that British builders are simply too good for it. That kind of attitude is precisely why immigrants do well here.

My British builder and kitchen makers would certainly be surprised to hear it. I’ve just paid out a total of 100 grand for a new kitchen and building work. Wasn’t too much bother for them.

In London the proliferation of construction firms either wholly E.European or employing high numbers of E.Euroepans in the large scale domestic market is absolutely based on better quality of work, better training, better work ethic. Not pay. People pay higher rates for higher quality, more reliable work. E.Europeans are often paid rather than less.

In my area there are large number of big domestic renovation projects at any one time. Either building new houses from scratch, or digging out basements, gutting and rebuilding the whole house. These are not the very large commercial building construction sites but they’re a relevant sample - budget 500 grand - 5 million. The work has to be good quality and people pay more for better work and reliability.

Well said Fatty - LoveIn's response to that has been - so you don't care about NI. LoveIn what the fuck does a legal bod living and working in the EU know about the day to day lives of people in manual trades in the UK?

And again I say that globalisation is an issue that impacts everyone across the board. We are now all competing with a global workforce. Including people from developing countries who have a strong motivation to work their arses off as their living conditions may not be as good.

Elton two of my family work in construction, neither wanted to leave the EU, they felt that construction does best in stable economic times when the long term outlook is seen to be good. Nothing about Brexit was going to bring that about. They are worried about the impact of a possible recession particulary having struggled through the financial crash and only just recovered their income to pre crash times.

LoveIn didn’t say that she didn’t care personally, she said that a lot people don’t care anymore ie. in the population which is how this pattern of favouring of E.Europeans came about.

And with regards to the special arrangements that have been long in place (pre-EU), before the Referendum, the EU were objecting to them because they were 'unfair' on other EU citizens.

With regards to Good Friday Agreement and NI I think the UK and RoI are best left to work out themselves, without the EU interfering to negative effects - because they are using NI as a bargaining chip which is pretty nasty in my view.

The UK government is policing it in the same way it used to, which used to work. The problem is if you bring in a massive workforce of people none of whom give a shit about safety and it’s suddenly become unenforceable. And if you’re a young single man from Bucharest who rents digs you’re really not going to care if you get done for it.
You’ll just pack your bags and move on to Dusselldorf or Hamburg or Paris. If you’re a settled person here of whatever nationality (there are many settled Polish and Irish in that industry too) with a mortgage and three kids in school and a car on finance and family here - then you’re fucked.

Incidentally, re the NI border. The solution I favour is to prevent a hard border by offering NI back in it’s entirety to Dublin and the Republic. Nobody wants that shitshow and money pit on their books and Dublin would pretty soon start talking if we did that. And the nationalists couldn’t blame anyone but Dublin. Sorted.

Hate, everyone has different experiences and we can’t all know everything. But what I would like to know is how Brexit is going to improve the lives of people who have been disadvantaged by the current setup. If it looked like it would actually make the people who voted for it better off (normal people, not Jacob Rees-Mogg), I might be less opposed to it, notwithstanding the other groups who stand to be majorly fucked over by this.

But the way things look at the moment, we screw up Northern Ireland and financial services, and for what? Do you think the weaker economic climate that will hang over the UK for the foreseeable future is going to create more and better paid construction jobs for British workers?