Who cleans your work-place?

The arrest of five illegal immigrants who turned up to clean the offices of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate has given us all a good laugh on a Friday morning but it highlights an important issue.

It is not just the twilight economy that employs illegal immigrants.  Many of our biggest companies are saving money by indirectly employing low-paid illegal immigrant labour.  UK firms have cut costs by outsourcing many of their non-core activities, such as cleaning, catering, printing, distribution and even security.  Typically, they will award a contract to an external provider who will then take on casual labour from an agency. Sometimes the agency itself may sub-contract the labour supply to another provider further down the food chain.  The large company with the reputation to protect is therefore three or four times removed from the employer of the illegal immigrants and can say  'nothing to do with me, guv'  if the media ever get hold of the story.

I went to a large corporate event a few years ago and before I got too drunk, I decided to do an experiment.  Instead of mingling with the people that I was supposed to be there to meet,  I chatted to a few of the waiters and the door staff.  Most of them were from countries which were then outside the EU (some still are) and whose citizens had no employment rights in the UK.  Of course,  if anyone had asked awkward questions, the companies that had sponsored the event would have been able to show that they were a million miles away from any culpability. 

For large companies, this arrangement gives them the best of both worlds. They can take the savings without risking the bad publicity, as they have other people to take the fall for them.  According to a study quoted in the Independent,  illegal immigrants are worth £6bn to the UK economy.  Some people are making a lot of money from illegal labour.

Which is why the comments by the Tories and Liberal Democrats reek of hypocrisy.  The Guardian reports:

[T]he shadow home secretary, David Davis, said the incident showed that the Home Office's ability to catch illegal immigrants was "so bad that they even manage to employ them as cleaners".

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "If even the Home Office is having trouble identifying illegal immigrants in its own buildings, it is no wonder other businesses are struggling."

So who cleans the Conservative and Liberal Democrat offices I wonder?  How many of the Tory Party's business donors have increased their profits by indirectly employing illegal immigrant labour?  If you could find the evidence, you could probably argue that some party donations have been paid for by profits made from illegal immigrants.

If you go into the City early in the morning , you will see tube trains full of foreign workers travelling home from their night jobs, cleaning the offices of the Square Mile's firms.  If the Immigration Officers want to look for illegal immigrants that would be a good place to start.  It might not be too popular with the business lobby though.  Consequently, any action taken against illegal immigrants is usually high-profile symbolism,  rather than a serious attempt to deal with the issue.  Make a big show of arresting one or two people but leave the other ten to clean our offices, please.

Next time you are at work early or staying late,  take a look around you.  Who are the people who come to clean up after everyone else has gone?  Who serves you your lunch in the staff canteen? How many of them have work permits and official permission to stay in Britain?  How reliant is your employer on the illegal economy?

It's not just the Immigration and Nationality Directorate. Everybody's at it!

Comments

[Alison]

Nearly missed this Steve somehow!Great post.

A great many in the services sector are on student visas to which they are entitled even if outside the EU.

Especially those in hotels, bars and serving silver service dinners at special events...

They get round the nos of hours they are allowed to work by going through employment agencies who fudge this for them - and by intermittently attending school.

[simon smith]

It is a strange world we live in . I am a caretaker of a large public building and am white caucasian and only too happy to take on cleaning duties. I'm surprised there are so many ethnic minorities employed in this sector compared to white UK born citizens. THis kind of work is not as bad as you may think. I wouldn't want to deny (legal) immigrants work but please emplyers - give them equal rights.