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Skilled and highly-motivated Poles 'push British graduates to back of the jobs queue'
The Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | December 30, 2007 | STEVE DOUGHTY

Posted on 12/31/2007 2:42:28 AM PST by Stoat

Skilled and highly-motivated Poles 'push British graduates to back of the jobs queue'

By STEVE DOUGHTY - More by this author » Last updated at 23:28pm on 30th December 2007

Skilled and highly-motivated Polish workers are winning jobs ahead of British university graduates, the leader of the CBI warned.

Employers prefer to hire Eastern European staff because they are more capable than supposedly well-qualified Britons, Richard Lambert said.

The low employability of British young people was "depressing", he added.

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Students

Class of 2007: Warsaw University graduates with their sights on Britain

 

His remarks in a speech to university vice-chancellors suggest that some of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern European workers who have come to Britain since their countries joined the European Union in 2004 are beginning to move out of the lowest paid work to challenge Britons for more demanding and better rewarded jobs

Mr Lambert, the director general of the employers' body, was also scathing about the Government's efforts to improve the competitiveness of young Britons on the jobs market and said the quality of British graduates was too low.

"If businesses can't find the skills or work attitudes that they need in the national workplace, they can perfectly well recruit them elsewhere," he said.

"They don't have to hire people from the UK system. And they don't have to locate their activities in the UK. That surely has been the big lesson since the EU enlargement."

He added: "Since then I've lost count of the number of times that employers have told me depressing stories about how the skills and employability of their central European - often Polish - recruits compare favourably with those of the domestic labour pool.

"Of course it does not make sense for a whole society to meet its skills needs by bringing in qualified immigrants.

"But it is perfectly rational, and it is certainly possible, for an individual company to behave in this way."

Dismissing the importance of sending half of all young people to university, Mr Lambert said business had "very little interest" in Government targets.

He said: "There is a sense, I am afraid, that more means less - that the rapid increase in the number of

students graduating from college or university has come at the expense of quality, in terms of knowledge, attitude and employability."

He warned that despite the expansion of higher education, there were shortages of youngsters able to read and count sufficiently well.

"The other message I have picked up is that employers' concerns are primarily focused at the level of basic and intermediate skills," Mr Lambert said.

"They are much more likely to feel their business is being held back by shortcomings in literacy and numeracy, or by the difficulty of attracting qualified technicians or apprentices, than they are by the quantity of graduates in the workforce.'"

David Willetts, Shadow Innovation, Universities and Skills Secretary, said: "We have been warning that not all universities have been paying enough attention to the quality of student teaching."

He added: "We must encourage businesses themselves to get more involved with universities. Schools need to do more in preparing students as well."


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: britain; employment; england; europe; greatbritain; jobs; poland; uk; unitedkingdom
He warned that despite the expansion of higher education, there were shortages of youngsters able to read and count sufficiently well.

"The other message I have picked up is that employers' concerns are primarily focused at the level of basic and intermediate skills," Mr Lambert said.

"They are much more likely to feel their business is being held back by shortcomings in literacy and numeracy, or by the difficulty of attracting qualified technicians or apprentices, than they are by the quantity of graduates in the workforce.'"

This 'sounds' very much like Great Britain is experiencing the expected and natural results of 'dumbing down' their education system, probably much like what we are doing here in the USA at the moment.  We are constantly hearing stories of lowering SAT standards and graduation qualifications, usually in order to meet affirmative action or minority graduation goals here in the USA.  We will experience the same fate as our dear British Friends if we allow such practices to continue.  Employers in a competitive, Capitalist nation such as the United States will not tolerate employees who cannot communicate well in English or those who do not have at least basic mathematics skills.

It's particularly astonishing to see the published concerns revolving around issues such as literacy....for Polish students, who take on English as a second language, to be MORE proficient than British students in their primary language is a sad state of affairs indeed.

Readers are encouraged to go to the Daily Mail page and look at comments left there....many appear to have been left by  private individuals and business owners who are quite patriotic but are at the end of their rope in trying to deal with inarticulate employees.

1 posted on 12/31/2007 2:42:31 AM PST by Stoat
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To: Stoat

Better hardworking Poles than wellfare-sucking Islamos.


2 posted on 12/31/2007 2:46:26 AM PST by SolidWood (Al Gore: "I have never heard of this, but I think it is a very good idea,")
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To: lizol; Lukasz; Grzegorz 246; Jedi Master Pikachu; kronos77; Bokababe; knighthawk; sergey1973

Ping


3 posted on 12/31/2007 2:47:14 AM PST by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: Stoat
Minorities break 'class barrier'

 

By Dominic Casciani
BBC News

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4434146.stm

 

alt
 

 

Young people from working class ethnic minorities tend to out-perform their white counterparts, says a report.

Research into 140,000 children over 30 years found immigrant families breaking through class barriers, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said.

Half of children from Indian working class families went into professional or managerial posts, compared with 43% of white children, it found.

But Pakistani and Bangladeshi children did worse than some white children.

Some 45% of those from Caribbean backgrounds also obtained professional or managerial posts, the study found.

The study into the success of ethnic minority children, many the sons and daughters of immigrants or born overseas themselves, looked at their lives over three decades, with the help of official statistics.

It suggested parents encouraging their children to get educated was one of the factors playing a key role in their success.

Academics at the University of Essex used national statistics to track what happened to 140,000 people born in England and Wales since the 1960s.

alt
alt A disproportionate number of the young people who are upwardly mobile are the children of parents who came to this country as migrants alt
 
Dr Lucinda Platt, Essex University

The study found proportionally more ethnic minority children appeared able to do better than their parents.

The report attributed this to their parents encouraging them to stick at education.

'Under-performance'

However, those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities were found to under-perform compared with white children from working class families.

"The Pakistanis [tracked in the figures] were less likely to end up in professional/managerial families even when taking their backgrounds and their own educational level into account," said the report.

While there appeared to be clear educational and social reasons for the poor performance of some Bangladeshi children, said the report, it was harder to explain the lack of social mobility in Pakistani children.

The report suggested two factors played a key role in explaining success.

Firstly, children of working class immigrants tended to be motivated by their parents, a phenomenon reported in other studies.

While some immigrants initially do economically worse on arrival in a country, because only the poorest paid jobs are available, many of those who stay see their children do a lot better because of encouragement to work hard at school.

Secondly, the report suggested the upward mobility had been helped by the expansion of Britain's service industry at the expense of manual jobs - meaning there was "more room at the top" for those who aspired to reach it.

Lucinda Platt, of Essex University, the report's author, found Jews and Hindus had more chance of upward mobility than Christians.

In contrast, Muslims and Sikhs had less chance of breaking through class barriers. Children born into professional and managerial families, regardless of their ethnicity, were less likely to find themselves in less qualified work than their parents.

"Britain is still a long way from being a meritocracy where social class no longer plays a part in determining children's chances of well-paid careers," said Dr Platt.

"There is good news to the extent that a disproportionate number of the young people who are upwardly mobile are the children of parents who came to this country as migrants.

"But their welcome progress is no cause for complacency, especially when it appears to be so much harder for young people from Pakistani or Bangladeshi families to get ahead."


 


4 posted on 12/31/2007 2:50:14 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: Stoat

Those 2 gals are rather cute, especially the one wearing the red jacket.

Oh, um, sorry, threadjack over. :-)


5 posted on 12/31/2007 2:51:16 AM PST by kb2614 (Hell hath no fury than a bureaucrat scorned)
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To: CarrotAndStick

“Minorities break ‘class barrier’ “

What does that have to do with Poles?


6 posted on 12/31/2007 2:56:49 AM PST by AlexW (Reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia. Happy not to be back in the USA for now.)
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To: Stoat
My son-in-law is a Polish national. His sister was the only one in his family that could make it to his wedding over here in the States. That was because, at the time, she was over here teaching English in the college level to Americans. She's also taught in Austria. She says that Americans are the worst students.

He now has his Masters and is doing well over here. His technical skills and experience is unequalled in the technical firm he's with.

7 posted on 12/31/2007 2:57:49 AM PST by chopperman
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To: chopperman
She says that Americans are the worst students.

I believe that it was President Bush who popularized, if not coined, the phrase "the soft racism of low expectations" when he was describing issues in American education.

We will follow Great Britain if we fail to correct these matters.

Just as we can thank the ACLU, in LARGE measure, for the 'homeless' blight that our cities are now experiencing, we will be able to 'thank' the NEA for 'dumbing down' the education system here in the USA.

I recall reading several interviews with high-tech company CEO's who bemoaned the fact that they are simply not able to find truly qualified American workers to fill many of their open positions, and they are faced with no alternative but to hire from a variety of Asian countries.

8 posted on 12/31/2007 3:12:00 AM PST by Stoat (Rice / Coulter 2008: Smart Ladies for a Strong America)
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To: AlexW

It has a lot to do with non-Islamic immigrants succeeding in Britain.

Poles are a minority in Britain, and also generally non-Islamic, if you didn’t notice.


9 posted on 12/31/2007 3:12:25 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: AlexW

>>“Minorities break ‘class barrier’ “

What does that have to do with Poles?<<

The expression “class barrier” has nothing to do with the ethnic minority status of the Polish immigrants (as another poster mistakenly implied) - but it has everything to do with the fact that even Upper Middle Class Poles, once they have relocated to Great Britain, must instantaneously be viewed as belonging to the Lower Middle Class; this is because of their initially low wealth (as compared with Britons). In other words: As soon as well-to-do Poles come to Great Britain, they are no longer above-average in wealth (though they may quickly climb back into that class within a few years).


10 posted on 12/31/2007 3:19:29 AM PST by alexander_busek
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To: alexander_busek

sooooo
A pollack, a islamo ffacist, and a brit walk into a pub.....


11 posted on 12/31/2007 4:03:53 AM PST by Casaubon (Internet Research Ninja Masta)
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To: CarrotAndStick
“Poles are a minority in Britain”

Yes, from a population standpoint.
In America, Poles are a minority of the population but
we do not class them as such.
We class people more on race and other factors rather then numbers by nationality.
Do you think any European would get a minority based scholarship? I doubt it.

12 posted on 12/31/2007 4:10:01 AM PST by AlexW (Reporting from Bratislava, Slovakia. Happy not to be back in the USA for now.)
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To: Casaubon

A pollack, a islamo ffacist, and a brit walk into a pub.....

hhahhahaa and then wha hoppened ...?


13 posted on 12/31/2007 4:11:46 AM PST by flat
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To: AlexW
From several articles on Britain and the immigration into it, posted here on FR, there seems to be a British mindset that supposedly dislikes/envies Eastern Europeans, with language being the biggest issue with/ against them.

This was in Ireland, though:

 

Living poles apart in a parallel existence doesn’t benefit anyone

Young Poles are deserting their country only to create a Polish bubble abroad, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/living-poles-apart-in-a-parallel-existence-doesnt-benefit-anyone-1253130.html

 

EXCERPT:

Migration on a sensible scale is one thing: this mass migration is in the interests only of employers, who would rather import cheap labour than make an effort to train the young people at home who have been let down by their schools and their society.

I live in Ealing, in West London, a borough now referred to in Poland as the fourth-largest Polish city in the world. Certainly, my village, South Ealing, is beginning to seem very foreign to the English, as well as to the Irish, Asian, West Indian and the other immigrants who have rubbed along together since I first moved here in 1979.

There was always a strong Polish presence, but the old Poles who had fled here from communism had learned English and integrated, while keeping a strong sense of their history and culture.

We don’t know the young Poles who have been arriving over the past few years in their tens of thousands unless we meet them in their places of work, although they walk past us in the street speaking Polish to each other or on their mobile phones. Because of technology, they live in a parallel world.

In Ealing, your average young Polish immigrant lives with other young Poles, watches Polish television and listens to Polish Radio, reads Polish news on the internet, communicates by phone with family and friends at home for little or nothing, travels back cheaply by coach or air for holidays or family celebrations, goes to mass at the local Polish church, shops in one of the innumerable Polskie delikatesys where newspapers and free-sheets provide local Polish news, Polish books can be bought and small ads in Polish scrutinised, socialises in Polish cafes and bars and clubs and, usually, mates with another Pole.

Geographically, they may be over here, but their hearts and minds are still over there.

14 posted on 12/31/2007 4:39:10 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: kb2614

“Those 2 gals are rather cute, especially the one wearing the red jacket.

Doesn’t hurt.

“Yes, Miss Cerwinski, we will consider you application most carefully. You should hear from our personnel office in a few days. See you later.

.....

“Man, you should see the girl I just hired!


15 posted on 12/31/2007 5:00:49 AM PST by proxy_user
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