Is this a d!ldo which I see before me?

Reading the deliberately provocative quotes about the British work ethic taken from the Jamie Oliver publicity stunt, I reckon he had the beginning of some points, just not the ones he was trying to make. This is because what he’s quoted as saying conveys a profound ignorance of poverty and the Eastern European migration that seemingly keeps his restaurants open.

My personal experience based on the Eastern European migrants I’ve encountered is many do indeed work harder and more effectively than their British counterparts. Fer instance, I can usually tell by the length of the queue in the staff canteen whether its Polish or British people behind the till. Similarly, I remember getting a fridge delivered by a British driver with a Polish assistant; the driver initially didn’t want to humph my old one away because it was too awkward until his assistant essentially shamed him into doing so. Then there was the time I walked past a café advertising for staff and couldn’t understand a word said by any of the people queuing up for interviews because, I’m guessing, they were all Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian etc..

These examples tell me absolutely nothing about country-specific attitudes to work. First off, Eastern European migration was and is economic migration and economic migrants are by definition self-selecting; they’re people with the drive, ambition and means to get on by getting out. To give an alternative example of how powerful self-selection can be,  the Rangers fans who went to Manchester were not representative of Scotland as a whole.

Second, migrants, particularly when it kicked off, are frequently massively over-qualified for the jobs they take on arrival. One example was the Italian restaurant in Edinburgh whose kitchen porters were to a man (and women) doctors, medical and otherwise. Another was when I was sifting thru CVs recruting for a job where I was after a decent/good graduate with 2-3 years vaguely relevant work experience. By contrast the top Polish candidate was a former university lecturer who’d gone on to advise the Polish government on privitisations before becoming a management consultant. Judging by the post-arrival silence in his CV, I’m guessing he was working as a kitchen porter or delivery man at the time. So yeah, you put that amount of human capital behind a till and you bet you’ll get your change calculated more quickly than you would by an unqualified Brit on minimum wage.

Third, and following directly on from the second, the low-skill, no-skill jobs Eastern European migrants typically take are often temporary stepping stones to something else. This matters a lot. I know this because for most of my 20s I was poor, which to me meant being physically scared of opening a leccie bill.

But, I was not and never have lived in poverty because poverty means being poor, having no or negligible resources to draw upon when life events - like a leccie bill - hit and not having a credible means of escape (hence terms like poverty trap). By contrast, once I finished the low paid work I’d chosen to do, I used my resources and opportunities to get a job and hey presto - in a completely predictable lower/middle middle class way - I've subsequently found myself earning a chunk more than most people. Go me. 

Except, internally, I always knew this would be the case; all I did, after a few years gadding about, was fulfill the class specific assumptions I was brought up with. My passing experience of being poor was that it was shit, but I never experienced the days stretching into years, then no-escape  decades grind that defines poverty. And much the same applies to many Eastern European migrants; the doctors left the kitchen and I'm guessing the management consultant also got a good job in due course. For them, as for me, the situations they found themselves could only ever be understood as being finite. And its profoundly easier to work hard in a shit job - what Jamie Oliver appears to think is "toughness" -  if you just know you'll not being doing it this time next year.

For me this account of migration and poverty shines a different light on the Jamie Oliver chat. His argument seems to be we should all get a bit more Eastern European. Really? I’ve worked alongside Polish (and latterly Greek) migrants for years, people who've made the transition from low skill, low pay jobs into white-collar careers that actually match their qualifications. None of them leave work any later than me, none of them work any harder than me before they do, partly, am guessing, because they want to enjoy having escaped from ignorant, exploitative, grasping shits like Jamie Oliver.

Me Incorporated vs the statistics

I was unfortunate enough to be unemployed a few years back, though fortunate enough for this to be when the economy was still growing. Being unemployed was bloody awful, like I remember being that embarrassed I used to wait for my neighbours to leave before I went out to do the shopping or some DIY. But, dear Christ it does teach you some life lessons.

One was the transitory nature of work and all it entails. Going from complimentary booze and nibbles in an airport business lounge to queuing up in the broo within the space of a coupla months I learned all the associated status markers belong to someone else and as such should never have much value attached to them.

Another was just how bloody awful unemployment is and how it's so obvious the vast majority of those signing on really, REALLY don’t want to be there. I remember watching a guy come in just so he could thank everybody for helping him get a job. And while his obvious elation was catching, what struck me most was his new sense of freedom and self-worth.

Yet another thing was the realisation that there really is a something for nothing benefits culture. Every fortnight I sat there ducking some nutjob bouncing about on chairs txting the gaggle of neds and nedettes congregated outside in between coming up with bullshit excuses as to why he couldn't attend the recruitment fairs various employers where then organising at the broo head office i.e. back in the day companies were actively hunting people to employ and some people where saying "naw yer alright pal".

Then there was the broo i.e. public sector staff themselves; about 40% of those I directly encountered amounted to no more than different flavours of cock (the figure would probably have been higher except c. a fifth were always gassing by the printer the entire time I was ever in so I never encountered them).  The worst was one lassie who left me stuck in front of her for 20 minutes while she phoned her boyfriend to tell him about a job she’d just found for him. He obviously wasn’t that keen because she kept telling him to “stop it” before eventually putting the phone down. Finally, I thought, I could sign on and f’off. Or not because now it was my turn to “stop it” because, as she then informed me, she was off for a coffee break.

So yeah being unemployed was - and with all the skivers and strivers bollocks, still is - a humiliating and humbling experience tempered only by my being lower middle class. Now by this I don't mean my lip was any stiffer than the next man’s, rather I had an all important chunk of cash in the bank plus my (former) employer had paid for me to be outplaced.

Blessed with the "management" grade package no less, from memory this meant 2 one to one sessions with a consultant, some group sessions plus unlimited access to a room full of computers and printers. Apart from some half decent CV advice the rest was essentially bollocks, but it did mean I had the option of somewhere to be during the week plus psychologically important “meetings” to put in the diary. And I got to limit my contact with well the “unemployed” to help preserve my lower middle class sensibilities.

It’s the “bollocks” though that matters here. When I was unemployed this meant how to access the “hidden” jobs market that never appears in job adverts because it consists entirely of contacts and networking through which 80% of people, I was reliably informed, actually find jobs. This was what the consultants were being paid to alert me to and guide me through. Thankfully, in a time before linkedin and facebook, this didn’t entail any associated mince about social networking “strategies” (i.e. electronically pestering people you only vaguely know in a needy fashion).

More importantly I was also spared the latest thang of setting up my own company as a “vehicle” for my consultancy expertise. So yeah, I never got to be the director of my own, new business. Instead, I stayed unemployed until a slimey, but ultimately half decent recruitment consultant whored me out enough times for me to get a job. Lucky me.  

These days folks appear less lucky judging by the number of people I’ve worked with who’ve subsequently set themselves up as consultancy businesses after being made redundant. Oh, but in this new era we all have portfolio careers not organisational careers you might say and yeah, if you’re an IT consultant i.e. have obviously transferable skills, that may well be the case. For plenty of other folks though it just isn’t, rendering many of the Me Inc.s being set up for the most part little more than spare room based distractions. Like outplacement itself they provide a middle class means of managing the psychology of unemployment. And its in line with benefit rules where if you’ve much cash left after 6 months you don’t get any unemployment benefit so what the hey, sod signing on, lets set up a business.

Whereas this would provide the French with the basis for a film detailing the existential angst of petite bourgeoisie life, here the consequences appear more statistical than cultural in ways that have obvious political ramifications. Like one of the noticeable things about the economy right now are the lower than expected levels of unemployment with this touted as evidence that the current government’s increasingly psychotic fixation with austerity isn’t as destructive as it actually is. Except, a contributory factor here is the number of redundant middle managers and latterly junior staff setting themselves up as consultancies to pass the time until they get an actual job. And besides unemployment, these new firms also boost business formation rates, again seemingly legitimising the current lot’s economic policies.

Me Inc. also goes some way to explaining the productivity puzzle where if so few people are unemployed, why is economic growth so pants? Because so many new company directors are spending all day tinkering with company letter heads waiting for some blerk they met at a conference three years ago to replay to an unwanted email is (part of the reason) why.