Posted on 11/08/2004 3:35:48 AM PST by ijcr
There will be no jobs for unskilled workers in Britain within 10 years, the leading employers' organisation claims today.
The prediction is based on the growth in "outsourcing" manufacturing and sales jobs abroad to economies where staff are hired at a fraction of the cost.
Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI, will tell his annual conference in Birmingham: "There will not be any work in Britain for unskilled people . . . within one scholastic generation."
In a survey of 150 companies, which employ 750,000 people between them, 51 per cent said the pressure to move their jobs abroad had increased.
The CBI says the phenomenon of moving jobs abroad is now so advanced that it has spread from the largely unskilled manufacturing sector through to financial services and IT.
Ian McCafferty, the CBI's chief economist, says call centres - the most significant example of outsourcing - accounted for only 14 per cent of jobs moved abroad. "That is well behind other services." India and China remain the most popular places for exporting jobs, with Eastern European countries becoming increasingly attractive.
"I have formed the view that if ever there was a country made for globalisation, it is Britain. It is in our DNA," Mr Jones will say.
He does not believe in the protectionism of countries such as America and France.
"Protectionist voices who think they can stop this - that's cloud cuckoo land," he will tell the conference, which will be attended by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner.
"Ensuring people have the skills remains our problem. You have nothing to fear if you skill yourself."
John Sunderland, the president of the CBI, and chairman of Cadbury Schweppes, is preparing to attack the lack of competition within Europe.
"The vision of Europe becoming the world's most competitive economy remains very much a distant one," he will say.
"Frankly, the snail's pace of change is making a mockery of the Lisbon agenda and the drive for economic reform."
we Americans will not have to worry. This is part of President Bush's 'no child left behind'. If we start educating our kids, we'll keep the skilled jobs here.
Boo Hoo. They say this every 10 years.
Free trade creates more jobs and raises prosperity for all.
ping
You can get a machine that packs your products into trays, wraps the trays in shrink wrap, packs the trays in boxes and loads the boxes on to carts that, once full, run onto a track into the warehouse.
And the machines will never develop carpel tunnel syndrome
They will still need politicians, no?
Doesn't really matter...they have the "dole" (welfare system).
would that be the same dole and health system no one can afford?
i guess so...
;)
I suppose a lot depends on what you call "unskilled".
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