The BBC Ignores A “Teachable Moment”
Yours truly has long suspected quite a few British do not fully understand what membership in the European Union means. This is perhaps a perfect example. The BBC reports:
Hundreds of workers have walked out at two oil refineries as a protest over the use of foreign labour escalated.
Police said about 800 people from the Lindsey and Conoco Phillips refineries in North Lincolnshire were involved in the unofficial strike.
Staff at Lindsey Oil Refinery walked out on Wednesday when a contractor took on 90 overseas workers.
Total, which owns the plant, said there would be no direct redundancies as a result of the contract being awarded.
The dispute began on Wednesday when 300 workers walked off a construction site at Lindsey Oil Refinery.
The work was won by IREM, an Italian-based contractor, which brought in its own workforce.
A Unite union shop steward, who did not wish to be named, said they were angry that foreigners were being employed by the contractor, Jacobs, at a time when British workers were being laid off…
Absolutely disgraceful reporting on the part of the Beeb. For as of that 11:10 report, nowhere in that piece is it made clear that those “overseas” and “foreign” workers are Italian EU nationals. Nor was it mentioned in yesterday’s initial piece. Nor is it gently pointed out that the protesting British workers themselves clearly don’t understand that those Italians have as much right to those jobs as do Britons.
The recession may reveal that “knowledge gap” increasingly. The EU-obsessed BBC is full of suggestions and “teachable moments” regarding, say, Gaza. Yet it somehow can’t fit into that report for the benefit of members of the British public who might not understand (such as those refinery workers), that EU nationals are NOT “overseas” or “foreign” workers.
Britain’s membership in the EU allows those Italian workers to be here and work, just as it allows those British workers to move to Italy to live and work. But if some British don’t grasp that, it is not hard to see why. After all, their own Government won’t be straight with them, and the BBC, too, appears willing to go down the Mail route.
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UPDATE: The BBC has updated the page. Still nothing is mentioned about the European Union. We are treated, however, to a helpful photo of apparently an Italian giving a photographer an editorial gesture:
BBC adopts the Mail's reporting style
Hello, Robert, the good thing here is that Italian city Lucca has passed a regulation forbidding “foreign” restaurants (meaning restaurants which serve non-Italian food) in the city center. The reason is that they want to preserve the “Italianess” of the city, so they will also instruct people on the way the waiter should be dressed, about what design they should have, etc.
I think that people are just getting mad, really mad…
Gracias, Nora. You no longer seem to blog much in English, which is a shame. My Spanish is fading!
This recession is going really to test the EU’s “free movement” ethos. I am convinced many Europeans don’t really understand what it means. (That Italians have as much right to live in Britain or Germany as New Yorkers have to live in Florida or Colorado.) Which is what we are seeing at those refineries here.
And media like the Beeb aren’t helping in their mischaracterizations. But the politicians didn’t have to address the issue nearly so much in “good times.” Now, in not so good times, one suspects it is increasingly going to become a real problem.
So if 400 Alaskans were shipped in to Detroit to build cars for lower wages whilst lots of locals remained unemployed, there wouldn’t be a problem?
Those are really different issues. First, Alaskans wouldn’t protest in this manner because they know full-well that Californians or Alabamians cannot be prevented from working in Alaska. Of course, if Mexicans were brought in at lower wages, that would be something else.
Secondly, even in its public comments, the Unite union is not charging “wage discrimination” — that the Italians and Portuguese are being paid less. Their complaints are revolving around that the “foreigners” are being employed at all.