Meet the British bosses who say: Give us foreign workers every time
Figures released yesterday showed that the number of British workers in jobs fell by 311,000 in the past year, while foreign employees went up by 181,000. After the announcement, the Mail spoke to three businessmen about their own experiences and why they think foreign workers are getting the jobs
CHARLIE MULLINS - PLUMBING BOSS
The number of foreign employees at a leading firm of plumbers has doubled over the past two years because British workers lack the right work ethic.
Charlie Mullins, the 52-year-old founder of Pimlico Plumbers, said Britons would ‘rather be footballers than do an honest day’s work’.
Mr Mullins, whose firm has 200 staff, said he was forced to employ foreign-born people because they work harder than their British counterparts.
Charlie Mullins, who runs Pimlico Plumbers, claimed many Britons would 'rather be footballers than do a hard day's work'
‘We’re increasingly employing foreign workers. They have the right attitude and are prepared to work harder,’ he said.
‘The younger British generation who come in for interviews are often sent by the benefit people and have no desire to work.
‘It’s a case of “won’t work”, not “can’t work”. They feel as if the country owes them a living.’
He said the number of foreign-born workers he employed at the company, London’s largest independent plumbers, had doubled in the past two years to 40, or 20 per cent of his staff.
They are mostly from South Africa and work as plumbers and tradesmen, roles which command annual salaries between £50,000 and £70,000.
But he also employs workers from Ireland, Italy, Australia and Spain in various roles in both the administrative side of the business and the trade side.
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And he said his foreign-born employees tended to earn more than native workers because they were willing to put in overtime and keen to increase their workload.
Mr Mullins, from Kent, founded the firm in 1979. It now has a turnover of £17million. But he said that many of the British people he interviewed for jobs had the wrong attitude and demanded too much.
‘British workers are too picky and choosy and not prepared to work hard,’ he said. ‘They are demanding ridiculous money.
‘Many of the young people who come in for interviews have never even been in a workplace. Many of them have degrees: I don’t need people with degrees – I need people with the right attitude.’
KEITH ABEL - ORGANIC GREENGROCER
Keith Abel has taken on foreign staff because British workers did not want to do jobs for his company
Keith Abel was forced to employ foreign-born workers because his popular firm, which delivers organic groceries, has struggled to find young British people to fill vacant positions.
He said some young Britons were trapped in the benefits system and did not want to get up early to do a job for £7-an-hour when they could rely on Government handouts.
Mr Abel, who started Abel and Cole more than 20 years ago, said: ‘We’ve got a fantastic workforce, we’ve got extremely hard-working people.
‘It’s just a bit of a tragedy that a considerable and significant number of them are from Eastern Europe and not the local communities given the rates of unemployment in the local area.’
He said his company could not recruit young British people to work for £7.25-an-hour as delivery drivers and that some young British people on benefits would rather receive handouts than work.
'People are not prepared to start with what they deem to be menial jobs. Terry Leahy, the head of Tesco, famously started stacking shelves. Everyone starts at the bottom'‘People who are in the benefits system struggle with the concept of getting out of bed at 5.30 to do a six o’clock until three o’clock shift on £7 an hour when the actual additional income they’d be taking home is initially very small,’ he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
‘The point is, the better-paid work comes for the people who start on the lower-paid work. There must be a solution whereby the Government is able to wean people off benefits rather than shut them off completely when somebody goes into a job.’
Mr Abel, 47, whose company turned over £30million last year, also said there was a reluctance among young people to start at the bottom and work their way up.
Mr Abel's company turned over £30m last year and he said he would happily find work for British people willing to work
He said: ‘People are not prepared to start with what they deem to be menial jobs. Terry Leahy, the head of Tesco, famously started stacking shelves. Everyone starts at the bottom.’
He said he would happily find roles for young British people who were out of work. ‘If people who are on the unemployment register want to ask us for jobs, we’d interview them in exactly the same way we interview anyone else,’ he added.
‘Business people are in there to do business. Politicians are in there to solve problems like unemployment.’
TERRY ROGERS - HOTEL OWNER
Terry Rogers says he has come to the sad conclusion that young Britons do not want to work
While horrified that more than a million young people in Britain are unemployed, I’m afraid I’m not at all surprised. After working in the catering industry for 16 years – many of those as a manager seeking to employ staff – I have come to the sad conclusion that many young people simply do not want to work.
Of course they say they want a job. They send off job applications and turn up for interviews. But when it comes down to hard graft, they are simply not interested.
The truth is that young people think the state owes them a living.
Underpinning everything is a welfare state which creates a culture where no one worries whether they have a job or not because there’s always free money from the Government to fall back on.
Also, brought up in school and home environments where criticism is practically non-existent, when they face the tough, challenging world of work, they are unable to cope.
To hear them complain about the shortage of jobs you would think they are desperate to work, willing to walk over hot coals to get a job. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
During my career, I have interviewed and employed many young people. And it shames me to say this but it was often easier to teach English to foreign applicants than it is to try to instill the right work ethic in our own English-speaking youth.
Time and again I see young people turn up for interviews wearing grubby jeans or tracksuits. They smoke and talk on the phone to their friends.
Many of them come with their partner or a parent (some even send their parents on ahead while they have a lie-in). What’s more, a lot don’t seem interested in the post at all – having turned up just so I can sign their Jobseekers’ Allowance form which means they can continue to receive welfare benefits.
One wretched soul told me he couldn’t work on Friday nights or Saturday mornings because he would be out with friends on Friday evenings and hung-over on Saturday morning!
Of those who do inquire seriously about the jobs, they often demand preposterous conditions. Many say they don’t want to work weekends or evenings because they want to go out with their friends. One applicant said the half-hour walk to work was too far.
One wretched soul told me he couldn’t work on Friday nights or Saturday mornings because he would be out with friends on Friday evenings and hung-over on Saturday morning! And they expect me to reward their commitment with a job?
Rather than interviewees doing their best to persuade me that I should employ them, the roles have become absurdly reversed with me having to persuade them to take the job.
Already I have had to let eight people go – and we have only been open since March – because they didn’t have the right attitude. One phoned in sick on his second day and never came back. Another lasted two weeks then she said the job was not for her because she missed Friday nights out with friends.
Another youngster was training for an NVQ qualification in our fine-dining team but lacked any ambition and decided life would be easier if she returned to her old job at a pub, where food was just heated in a microwave.
And I sacked one employee for phoning in sick, then posting pictures of herself at a social event on the same day on Facebook.
How then have we got ourselves into this ridiculous position?
All three managers argue that many British employees are more interested in taking benefits and going out drinking and socialising than holding down a job (posed by models)
Schools must take part of the blame. They teach subjects such as media studies, which give them false hopes about the type of jobs they can secure. There is a limit to the number of people who can work on The X Factor.
The tragedy is that so many youngsters seem devoid of real-life experience. This is where parents are at fault. From what I have seen, many parents have the same disengaged, uncommitted and welfare-sodden attitudes as their children.
Among many, there seems to be an utter absence of any sense of responsibility, work ethic or pride in contributing to society.
I recently gave a talk to a careers night at a local college. The youngsters stood slouched, hands in pockets staring up at the ceiling, some of them whistling under their breath. Not a single parent present chastised them for such unacceptable disrespect to an adult who had given up their time to address them.
There are those, however, who will do anything to secure a job.
I once interviewed a young man in Staffordshire. He had taken a ferry, train and bus from the Isle of Man to make the appointment. He was wearing a suit and tie.
Among many, there seems to be an utter absence of any sense of responsibility, work ethic or pride in contributing to society
I gave him a job as a waiter and he’s now an events manager for a university. You’ve probably guessed – he is foreign (having been born in Indonesia).
One of the best employees I ever had was a young Turk who barely spoke any English. He was so keen that I gave him a backroom job.
After infuriating weeks when other British employees had called in sick or turned up late, I put the Turk on the frontline. He was polite and friendly, happily juggling the job with two afternoons of English classes each week. He now manages one of the bars in Dublin Airport.
Job opportunities are certainly here and I want to give them to young people in my local area, but I’ve hit a wall. In desperation this week, I asked friends in the catering industries in Spain, Morocco and Holland to recommend any staff.
The first step to raise standards in our home-grown young is to admit that, for many, unemployment has become a personal choice to avoid hard work – and not an inescapable trap.
