BECTU's views on Department for Education and Employment review of UK Work Permit arrangements
31 January 2000
Following the recent meeting at the TUC, I write to confirm BECTU's general views on this issue. In the time available I can present only a brief summary of our arguments, which are based on our practical experience of the arrangements as they affect our freelance members in film and television, together with some of our theatre members.
The Work Permit system
As our starting point, we certainly believe there should continue to be a work permit system as such. If properly devised and operated, such a system can assist in maximising employment opportunities within the resident labour market and encouraging investment in skills, while allowing the recruitment of highly skilled workers from abroad where the resident labour-market can provide no equivalent.
The labour market test and consultation
- We broadly support the existing approach in which - at least in principle - there is an examination of whether work permits applicants would displace resident labour and whether terms and conditions would undercut resident workers.
- We value the opportunity to put forward our views on individual cases. In a complex and fragmented freelance labour market we believe this is the only viable approach.
- We believe, however, that consultation should be more extensive and more consistently applied than is currently the case. The aim should be for as full a system of consultation as possible, with annual sectoral reviews (based on hard data on applications and outcomes).
- We would be opposed to the introduction of a quota system. For the reasons set out above, we believe the opportunity for consultation on individual cases is essential in a complex freelance labour market, especially in the entertainment sector.
- We believe that quotas - which might appear attractive as a means of deregulation - should not be allowed to undermine this. A quota system would potentially deny the possibility for consultation and could prove extremely inflexible, and - based on foreign experience - excessively bureaucratic. Devising and agreeing meaningful quotas in the first place would seem to present an almost impossible task.
- A particular problem - especially in the film industry - is the employers' tendency to present applications at the last minute. This undermines the credibility of some film employers' call for a 'fast track' procedure, since in our view the problems are of their own making (ie their administrative deficiencies) rather than arising from the work permit procedures themselves. A more cynical view would be that some employers deliberately present last minute applications in the belief that they can achieve a more favourable response.
- We propose consideration of charging commercial (but not public service or voluntary sector) employers as a means of discouraging last minute applications. This could take the form of a sliding scale in which early applications (allowing time for proper consultation) would attract no or minimal charge, but charges would subsequently increase with lateness. The aim would be to encourage more discipline on the part of employers and to indicate the OLS's strong preference for applications submitted in reasonable time.
- We face some problems which appear to fall outside or on the borderline of OLS's remit ie examples of Commonwealth citizens in the UK as tourists or visitors who we encounter working at skilled jobs in our sector (eg technicians on sports outside broadcasts). We believe such examples - if proved - are clear abuses of the system.
- Our problem is the apparent lack of clear and quick channels of communication to raise such problems. Reference on from the OLS to the Home Office does not appear to be clearly targetted and does not allow sufficiently quick attention to such problems.
- We are emphatically not calling for revised or tightened immigration procedures. We would simply find it useful if there was a clear and specific means of raising such problems (eg a specific reference point in the Home Office and the facility to investigate quickly if necessary). This would, in our view, tie in with the Government's aim of a coherent 'joined up' approach between Departments (in this case, OLS and the Home Office).
- In line with the public policy aim of encouraging training provision and investment in skills, we believe training should be used more prominently and explicitly as a criterion in deciding on applications ie where appropriate employers should be required to demonstrate existing training investment or, on occasions, to make specific provision for resident labour to work alongside successful applicants on a supernumerary basis in order to develop appropriate skills for the future.
- For example, there have been specific instances in the theatre sector where the bringing in of foreign technical expertise (eg the use of 'animatronics') should, in our view, have been accompanied by a facility for resident labour to observe and learn such skills.
Last updated 25 April 2000