Recruiters hit back as Miliband accused of ‘demonising the recruitment industry’
25 September 2013
Recruiters have hit back at claims made by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband yesterday that some recruitment agencies are “hiring only from overseas”.
Wed, 25 Sep 2013Recruiters have hit back at claims made by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband yesterday that some recruitment agencies are “hiring only from overseas”.
In his speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Miliband described the alleged practice as part of the UK’s “race to the bottom”, grouping it alongside employers not paying the minimum wage and “shady gangmasters exploiting people”.
Miliband declared that none of these practices would be allowed should Labour win the next General Election. “Not under my government,” he said.
In response Kevin Green, chief executive officer at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) said that Ed Miliband “should focus less on demonising the recruitment industry and more on how we should train and invest in our young people so that they are better placed to get the jobs available”.
“This is the third time we have heard him say this about our sector and it is simply not true.”
Liz Longman, CEO of The Employment Agents’ Movement (TEAM), agreed, telling Recruiter: “I don’t believe that this is the case.”
Chris Clay, director of Skills Provision International, one of a number of staffing companies named in a briefing document sent to Recruiter last year, by Miliband's aide James Stewart, which contains a list of those recruiters specialising “in supplying workers from Eastern and Central Europe to British firms”, tells Recruiter: “Our policy is quite simple – our vacancies are open to candidates from any EU country and to anyone from outside the EU with a valid visa.”
Clay says his company never advertises jobs in Polish or Romanian, for example, though he said it “occasionally puts out messages in Spanish one day, French the next” on Facebook. “We are very conscious of the rules and regulations,” he says.
Miliband’s comments are almost identical to those he made in a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research in July last year, in which he said: “When they [recruitment agencies] work well, these agencies can play a crucial role in our economy. And the majority do. But some recruitment agencies operating in Britain are now effectively open solely to foreign workers. They exclude local workers from their books.”
Clay says he has never received a direct request from an employer to hire people of a certain nationality. However, he says that on occasions he says employers make their preferences known implicitly. Clay says his response is “to advertise the position as honestly as we can in respect of the terms and conditions”. “Candidates are treated as individuals, their nationality doesn’t come into it,” he adds.
Someone who says he is the owner of another company named by the Labour Party, Workforce Plus, a specialist supplier of CNC operators, tells Recruiter that all its vacancies are open to everyone irrespective of their nationality.
Asked by Recruiter whether it would be fair to say that most of the workers he supplies are foreign nationals, he says that activity at the company was “at a very low level” and that “you can’t do any statistics from my figures”.
However, the website of another company named by the Labour Party suggests that Miliband’s claims are not completely unfounded. “All our cleaners [which it employs directly itself] come from Poland. Several of them have had extensive cleaning experience in the UK”, says the company, Anias Poland, on its website.
Recruiter contacted Anias Poland, which provides a range of services including recruitment, but it had not responded as recruiter.co.uk went to press.
Azmat Mohammed, director general at the Institute of Recruiters, tells Recruiter: “It is the government’s job to make sure local people are well skilled and to ensure businesses are incentivised to hire and provide additional training.”
In his speech to the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Miliband described the alleged practice as part of the UK’s “race to the bottom”, grouping it alongside employers not paying the minimum wage and “shady gangmasters exploiting people”.
Miliband declared that none of these practices would be allowed should Labour win the next General Election. “Not under my government,” he said.
In response Kevin Green, chief executive officer at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) said that Ed Miliband “should focus less on demonising the recruitment industry and more on how we should train and invest in our young people so that they are better placed to get the jobs available”.
“This is the third time we have heard him say this about our sector and it is simply not true.”
Liz Longman, CEO of The Employment Agents’ Movement (TEAM), agreed, telling Recruiter: “I don’t believe that this is the case.”
Chris Clay, director of Skills Provision International, one of a number of staffing companies named in a briefing document sent to Recruiter last year, by Miliband's aide James Stewart, which contains a list of those recruiters specialising “in supplying workers from Eastern and Central Europe to British firms”, tells Recruiter: “Our policy is quite simple – our vacancies are open to candidates from any EU country and to anyone from outside the EU with a valid visa.”
Clay says his company never advertises jobs in Polish or Romanian, for example, though he said it “occasionally puts out messages in Spanish one day, French the next” on Facebook. “We are very conscious of the rules and regulations,” he says.
Miliband’s comments are almost identical to those he made in a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research in July last year, in which he said: “When they [recruitment agencies] work well, these agencies can play a crucial role in our economy. And the majority do. But some recruitment agencies operating in Britain are now effectively open solely to foreign workers. They exclude local workers from their books.”
Clay says he has never received a direct request from an employer to hire people of a certain nationality. However, he says that on occasions he says employers make their preferences known implicitly. Clay says his response is “to advertise the position as honestly as we can in respect of the terms and conditions”. “Candidates are treated as individuals, their nationality doesn’t come into it,” he adds.
Someone who says he is the owner of another company named by the Labour Party, Workforce Plus, a specialist supplier of CNC operators, tells Recruiter that all its vacancies are open to everyone irrespective of their nationality.
Asked by Recruiter whether it would be fair to say that most of the workers he supplies are foreign nationals, he says that activity at the company was “at a very low level” and that “you can’t do any statistics from my figures”.
However, the website of another company named by the Labour Party suggests that Miliband’s claims are not completely unfounded. “All our cleaners [which it employs directly itself] come from Poland. Several of them have had extensive cleaning experience in the UK”, says the company, Anias Poland, on its website.
Recruiter contacted Anias Poland, which provides a range of services including recruitment, but it had not responded as recruiter.co.uk went to press.
Azmat Mohammed, director general at the Institute of Recruiters, tells Recruiter: “It is the government’s job to make sure local people are well skilled and to ensure businesses are incentivised to hire and provide additional training.”
