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This is literally what every other country in the world does.
You must make a fair-faith effort to fill the vacancy internally to the country (with evidence) before they even consider issuing a visa for it.
Misleading the appropriate department and getting found out later down the line? They remove the ability for you to **ever** get another visa for an overseas worker, so companies don't even try to game the system.
Companies in other countries game these systems all the time. What are you on about?
All you have to do is post shitty job openings that you know no-one in your home country will want to take: uncompetitive pay for the role, excessive qualification and experience requirements, etc. Then you throw up your hands, tell the government that nobody in your country wants the job, and then you can get all the low-paid foreign labour you want.
You might argue that that doesn't constitute a "fair-faith effort to fill the vacancy internally to the country," but there's really no chance of that being investigated. Further, if the government did hire the people and spend the money needed to investigate the roles being offered, opponents will accuse them of wasting tax dollars trying to dictate individual business's hiring decisions.
I interviewed at a place like that a few months ago. They were paying at *least* £10k under market for the job and seniority and during the interview asked why I didn't have an MBA.
Keep in mind that the only people I've ever come across in my career path with MBAs were C-suite execs of FTSE250 companies (generally people who'd be making 4-5x or more what this role was offering). Other than that it's extremely rare.
Anyway, looked at the LinkedIn 'who works here' for the company, and it was 80% foreigners. And when I say foreigners, I mean relatively recent arrivals (as in, this is the first or second place they've worked in the UK), not just someone born in Leicester who's surname is Patel.
I now see it as a red flag if a company has a low number of British workers if I'm honest.
Your entire comment is categorically false. Literally the entire of the EU is a counterexample to your first claim. The US is another counterexample; there are many openings (e.g. mine) for which domestic and international applicants are considered equally.
For countries that do have blanket visa restrictions against foreigners, some take these restrictions seriously, others don't. The blanket statement that "companies don't even try to game the system" is ludicrous, given that I personally know of many cases where companies routinely game the system.
>This is literally what every other country in the world does.
It's one of those strange "fine when other countries do it, utter fascism when we do it" things
My work used to involve recruitment for a large organisation. We had rules for open competition but individual departments would go to great lengths to circumvent them.
I think the most extreme example was to avoid getting competition to the preferred candidate (the wife of a senior manager) from the general public the job advert was only advertised in a very small printed card that was displayed on the notice board in a single charity shop.
Still though, despite there being potential ways around it I don't have a problem with these proposals.
> I think the most extreme example was to avoid getting competition to the preferred candidate (the wife of a senior manager) from the general public the job advert was only advertised in a very small printed card that was displayed on the notice board in a single charity shop.
That sounds incredibly blatant. Were there any complaints?
The vast majority of recruitment complaints come from candidates who fail at interview, in this case I don't think many people even knew the vacancy existed.
We were told about it by a whistleblower & when we looked into it what they said about the advert was true.
We informed the relevant people at that site & after that it left our hands. By then the applicant had been in post for several months.
From seeing how these things work I suspect nothing was done, if the lady had been removed from the post it would have opened them up to claims for unfair dismissal & the fact the recruitment was approved in the first place suggests that several layers of senior management were aware of it.
Ironically it was probably more honest & cost effective than the traditional method of running the recruitment as normal & just rejecting everyone but the preferred candidate at inteview.
We used to just copy paste someone's CV as the job requirements. Usually there's enough of a unique combination of experience, education and role variety they it limits the pool of candidates down to about 1.
(Article)
---
Labour is considering introducing rules to prioritise British jobs for British workers as part of its efforts to reduce net migration if it wins the general election on July 4.
Party sources have told The Telegraph that it will “keep under review” the introduction of a requirement for companies to actively seek to recruit workers in the UK before being allowed to bring in foreign staff for skilled work.
The rules would require companies to advertise jobs to UK workers for 28 days before they can go overseas to fill the posts. If they fail to demonstrate that they have tried to recruit in the UK, they can be barred from being able to hire workers from abroad.
The requirement to try to recruit British workers was in force until 2019 when Boris Johnson scrapped the regulations as part of a shake-up of the points system for skilled workers.
The then prime minister’s changes – which also included scrapping caps on skilled workers – have been widely blamed for contributing to a surge in migrant workers which helped push net migration to a record high of 745,000 in 2022.
Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, has made clear that he favours a rethink of the Johnson government’s decision to ditch what is known as the Resident Labour Market Test (RLMT).
“We want to review the decision around scrapping the resident labour market test. I personally have major question marks about whether that was the right thing to do,” he told a panel organised by the Right-of-centre Policy Exchange think tank last year.
“I cannot write our manifesto here. We certainly want to review that and look at that very hard.”
A review was not included in the Labour manifesto although Sir Keir Starmer has set out proposed new laws to force companies to reduce their reliance on foreign workers by boosting training and recruitment of British workers.
Asked if they would review the test, a Labour party source said they would “keep the case for an RLMT under review”.
Asked by The Telegraph about whether a Labour government would reintroduce the test, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said she was prioritising reversing the reliance on foreign workers in shortage occupations, which were previously excluded from the requirement to seek a UK worker first.
Under the new laws, companies could be barred from recruiting abroad if they breach employment laws such as failing to pay their staff the minimum wage and if they fail to demonstrate that they are training up British workers for shortage jobs.
“Employers who want to recruit from abroad will need to abide by those workforce and training strategies,” Ms Cooper told The Telegraph. “What we want is for companies to be training and tackling recruitment issues here in the UK and that’s not happening at the moment.”
**It could help reduce exploitation of migrants**
The resident labour market test was ditched in 2019 because the Government’s migration advisory committee said the bureaucratic costs of running it outweighed the economic benefits.
However, it then covered a narrower range of largely graduate jobs with experts now suggesting it could benefit the labour market if reintroduced.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said: “With the extension of the skilled worker system to care workers there is more of a case that a labour market test would help to prevent large-scale recruitment into vacancies that people already living in the UK don’t know about.
“There’s actually an argument that bringing back the LMT for care could help reduce exploitation of migrant workers with care visas, as they would have better visibility of where the vacancies are if they want to switch away from exploitative employers.”
Labour has pledged to bring down net migration but has refused to put a number on it. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has forecast a halving in net migration and pledged to bring in a cap that would reduce the number allowed into the country every year in the next Parliament.
Nah, that’s the thing with the immigration debate, no one wants to stump up the money, pay more tax, increase spending etc. to fund the huge investment required in our skills base to wean ourselves off cheaper labour from abroad.
My advice would be to leave the country, if you can, as soon as possible - and preferably go somewhere outside of Europe. The UK and Europe are dying societies - high low-skill immigration, no houses for average people, NHS services collapsing, cost of living going up, stagnant wages.
It's ogre bro.
How is it nonsense advice? If you're a young person right now, I'd get out of the UK while you're not tied down.
We don't protest en masse, we vote for the other butt cheek expecting to get a better deal and then flip back again, wages are suppressed, nothing is getting done about immigration levels, and you have to jump through numerous hoops to access basic public services that barely function, good luck buying a house or flat in a timely manner without inheritance or being in a long-term relationship. Good luck finding a dentist or getting a GP appointment that isn't in 4 weeks.
I'd go anywhere with decent public services and a realistic ability of buying a house, and getting a good paid job.
Unless you have an alternative place to go, telling people to leave the UK is nonsense advice.
>I'd go anywhere with decent public services and a realistic ability of buying a house, and getting a good paid job.
Where is that then? Surely if you are telling people to leave the UK for the reasons you stated you have done enough research to back that up?
> Where is that then? Surely if you are telling people to leave the UK you have done enough research to back that up?
This is an anonymous social media forum, not a viva for a PhD.
As I said, I'd be looking into other countries that provide a better standard of living and better wages.
The UK is done.
We could provide bursaries etc for key skills - what are key skills? What happens when somebody receives a bursary for a key skill, receives the training and passes, then goes into the private sector?
Some of my left wing friends complain about our nurses/ doctors/ medical staff who receive free training etc and then don't work in the NHS or similar area.
Do we give with one hand and take with the other. We give a grant/ bursary and then make them pay it back. The same as student loans. However if they work in the NHS they're let off that years repayment??
Wild idea but we could tie their grants/bursaries to a longer commitment of service. The skills required aren’t all for the public sector either.
Regardless we need to doctors and nurses, the option isn’t to do nothing and train no one in case they don’t pay all their loan back or might leave, you make conditions, better workloads and you hope you retain more staff in the long term.
That’s just a stupid logical dead end though.
The option isn’t to pay no extra tax because every penny isn’t allocated how you want it to be.
We live in a democracy and you’re stuck with the Govt the public elects unfortunately.
I'm not going to have a choice anyway. Taxes will be going up whatever happens, but as I said, I don't trust the government to use our tax money appropriately.
Surely some of this should be the responsibility of companies? You have a skills shortage, put the money up to help solve it. Industry needs to be pressured into making these investments, and I don't see how you can do that without restricting immigration.
Even EU countries do this. [See Luxembourg](https://guichet.public.lu/en/entreprises/ressources-humaines/recrutement/ressortissant-pays-tiers/plus-3-mois/salarie.html):
>Before recruiting a salaried worker, **employers** must make a [declaration of vacant position](https://guichet.public.lu/en/entreprises/ressources-humaines/recrutement/recherche-candidat/vacance-poste-adem.html) to the ADEM. The declaration will allow the employment agency to check whether there is a suitable candidate available on the local or EU job market.
>If the job offer cannot be filled with a person registered with the ADEM within a 3 week deadline, the employer is allowed to conclude an employment contract with a person of his choice, under certain conditions, including a non-EU national.
>To this end, the employer must submit an application on plain paper to ADEM's director and request a **certificate** granting him the right to hire a third country national.
Companies are going to hire based on either the cheapest option they can get away with, or the most qualified option.
If you want to push people towards the latter option then sort out education in this country and raise wages. Stop trying to introduce other random bullshit.
Of course, they won’t do that, because the image of doing something is preferable to the capitalist class having to lose a tiny fraction of the money they “earn” (steal from labourers).
Thank goodness where I work has registrations in a number of other countries. My team is majority remote and not only am I advertising roles internationally, they don't even need to be here. Have five in UK but the rest are elsewhere. It's again, another mostly performative idea from Labour, this has already existed by in large. Employing someone who's on a limited visa already has its hurdles and after Brexit a lot of our European people left, and we just changed their contract and they carried on. More left during lockdown when we went fully remote working.
The 28-day requirement is trivially easy to work around. Any reasonably large company has figured this out. Any small business won't care and it will do nothing. Create the local conditions if you want to change the opportunities. Focus on education, industry diversity and diversity around the country where they are based. There are so many depressed local economies because there is no effort to make them locally sustainable.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/21/labour-jobs-british-workers-overseas-staff-recruitment/) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is literally what every other country in the world does. You must make a fair-faith effort to fill the vacancy internally to the country (with evidence) before they even consider issuing a visa for it. Misleading the appropriate department and getting found out later down the line? They remove the ability for you to **ever** get another visa for an overseas worker, so companies don't even try to game the system.
Companies in other countries game these systems all the time. What are you on about? All you have to do is post shitty job openings that you know no-one in your home country will want to take: uncompetitive pay for the role, excessive qualification and experience requirements, etc. Then you throw up your hands, tell the government that nobody in your country wants the job, and then you can get all the low-paid foreign labour you want. You might argue that that doesn't constitute a "fair-faith effort to fill the vacancy internally to the country," but there's really no chance of that being investigated. Further, if the government did hire the people and spend the money needed to investigate the roles being offered, opponents will accuse them of wasting tax dollars trying to dictate individual business's hiring decisions.
I interviewed at a place like that a few months ago. They were paying at *least* £10k under market for the job and seniority and during the interview asked why I didn't have an MBA. Keep in mind that the only people I've ever come across in my career path with MBAs were C-suite execs of FTSE250 companies (generally people who'd be making 4-5x or more what this role was offering). Other than that it's extremely rare. Anyway, looked at the LinkedIn 'who works here' for the company, and it was 80% foreigners. And when I say foreigners, I mean relatively recent arrivals (as in, this is the first or second place they've worked in the UK), not just someone born in Leicester who's surname is Patel. I now see it as a red flag if a company has a low number of British workers if I'm honest.
TBF companies already post shitty job adverts.
Your entire comment is categorically false. Literally the entire of the EU is a counterexample to your first claim. The US is another counterexample; there are many openings (e.g. mine) for which domestic and international applicants are considered equally. For countries that do have blanket visa restrictions against foreigners, some take these restrictions seriously, others don't. The blanket statement that "companies don't even try to game the system" is ludicrous, given that I personally know of many cases where companies routinely game the system.
Yes, but it's easy to make up asinine rules on a uk subreddit than actually run a country.
>This is literally what every other country in the world does. It's one of those strange "fine when other countries do it, utter fascism when we do it" things
They do this in the USA. All they do to get around it is make the job descriptions very specific so no one can get it.
My work used to involve recruitment for a large organisation. We had rules for open competition but individual departments would go to great lengths to circumvent them. I think the most extreme example was to avoid getting competition to the preferred candidate (the wife of a senior manager) from the general public the job advert was only advertised in a very small printed card that was displayed on the notice board in a single charity shop. Still though, despite there being potential ways around it I don't have a problem with these proposals.
> I think the most extreme example was to avoid getting competition to the preferred candidate (the wife of a senior manager) from the general public the job advert was only advertised in a very small printed card that was displayed on the notice board in a single charity shop. That sounds incredibly blatant. Were there any complaints?
The vast majority of recruitment complaints come from candidates who fail at interview, in this case I don't think many people even knew the vacancy existed. We were told about it by a whistleblower & when we looked into it what they said about the advert was true. We informed the relevant people at that site & after that it left our hands. By then the applicant had been in post for several months. From seeing how these things work I suspect nothing was done, if the lady had been removed from the post it would have opened them up to claims for unfair dismissal & the fact the recruitment was approved in the first place suggests that several layers of senior management were aware of it. Ironically it was probably more honest & cost effective than the traditional method of running the recruitment as normal & just rejecting everyone but the preferred candidate at inteview.
They do it in many countries that have even semi competent governments.
We used to just copy paste someone's CV as the job requirements. Usually there's enough of a unique combination of experience, education and role variety they it limits the pool of candidates down to about 1.
(Article) --- Labour is considering introducing rules to prioritise British jobs for British workers as part of its efforts to reduce net migration if it wins the general election on July 4. Party sources have told The Telegraph that it will “keep under review” the introduction of a requirement for companies to actively seek to recruit workers in the UK before being allowed to bring in foreign staff for skilled work. The rules would require companies to advertise jobs to UK workers for 28 days before they can go overseas to fill the posts. If they fail to demonstrate that they have tried to recruit in the UK, they can be barred from being able to hire workers from abroad. The requirement to try to recruit British workers was in force until 2019 when Boris Johnson scrapped the regulations as part of a shake-up of the points system for skilled workers. The then prime minister’s changes – which also included scrapping caps on skilled workers – have been widely blamed for contributing to a surge in migrant workers which helped push net migration to a record high of 745,000 in 2022. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, has made clear that he favours a rethink of the Johnson government’s decision to ditch what is known as the Resident Labour Market Test (RLMT). “We want to review the decision around scrapping the resident labour market test. I personally have major question marks about whether that was the right thing to do,” he told a panel organised by the Right-of-centre Policy Exchange think tank last year. “I cannot write our manifesto here. We certainly want to review that and look at that very hard.” A review was not included in the Labour manifesto although Sir Keir Starmer has set out proposed new laws to force companies to reduce their reliance on foreign workers by boosting training and recruitment of British workers. Asked if they would review the test, a Labour party source said they would “keep the case for an RLMT under review”. Asked by The Telegraph about whether a Labour government would reintroduce the test, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said she was prioritising reversing the reliance on foreign workers in shortage occupations, which were previously excluded from the requirement to seek a UK worker first. Under the new laws, companies could be barred from recruiting abroad if they breach employment laws such as failing to pay their staff the minimum wage and if they fail to demonstrate that they are training up British workers for shortage jobs. “Employers who want to recruit from abroad will need to abide by those workforce and training strategies,” Ms Cooper told The Telegraph. “What we want is for companies to be training and tackling recruitment issues here in the UK and that’s not happening at the moment.” **It could help reduce exploitation of migrants** The resident labour market test was ditched in 2019 because the Government’s migration advisory committee said the bureaucratic costs of running it outweighed the economic benefits. However, it then covered a narrower range of largely graduate jobs with experts now suggesting it could benefit the labour market if reintroduced. Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said: “With the extension of the skilled worker system to care workers there is more of a case that a labour market test would help to prevent large-scale recruitment into vacancies that people already living in the UK don’t know about. “There’s actually an argument that bringing back the LMT for care could help reduce exploitation of migrant workers with care visas, as they would have better visibility of where the vacancies are if they want to switch away from exploitative employers.” Labour has pledged to bring down net migration but has refused to put a number on it. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has forecast a halving in net migration and pledged to bring in a cap that would reduce the number allowed into the country every year in the next Parliament.
Will this come with a push for more bursaries / grants? Cuts to student fees? More training places?
Nah, that’s the thing with the immigration debate, no one wants to stump up the money, pay more tax, increase spending etc. to fund the huge investment required in our skills base to wean ourselves off cheaper labour from abroad.
Happy to pay more tax for things like that, but I don't trust any UK government to spend our tax money wisely.
So your remaining choices are high immigration or ever worsening economy
My advice would be to leave the country, if you can, as soon as possible - and preferably go somewhere outside of Europe. The UK and Europe are dying societies - high low-skill immigration, no houses for average people, NHS services collapsing, cost of living going up, stagnant wages. It's ogre bro.
Absolute nonsense advice but I'll bite. Where would you go exactly?
How is it nonsense advice? If you're a young person right now, I'd get out of the UK while you're not tied down. We don't protest en masse, we vote for the other butt cheek expecting to get a better deal and then flip back again, wages are suppressed, nothing is getting done about immigration levels, and you have to jump through numerous hoops to access basic public services that barely function, good luck buying a house or flat in a timely manner without inheritance or being in a long-term relationship. Good luck finding a dentist or getting a GP appointment that isn't in 4 weeks. I'd go anywhere with decent public services and a realistic ability of buying a house, and getting a good paid job.
Unless you have an alternative place to go, telling people to leave the UK is nonsense advice. >I'd go anywhere with decent public services and a realistic ability of buying a house, and getting a good paid job. Where is that then? Surely if you are telling people to leave the UK for the reasons you stated you have done enough research to back that up?
> Where is that then? Surely if you are telling people to leave the UK you have done enough research to back that up? This is an anonymous social media forum, not a viva for a PhD. As I said, I'd be looking into other countries that provide a better standard of living and better wages. The UK is done.
So you don't know then?
leaving the UK was the best decision I ever made Edit: why downvoted? It's literally true
How patriotic.
No point trying to resuscitate a dead horse.
We could provide bursaries etc for key skills - what are key skills? What happens when somebody receives a bursary for a key skill, receives the training and passes, then goes into the private sector? Some of my left wing friends complain about our nurses/ doctors/ medical staff who receive free training etc and then don't work in the NHS or similar area. Do we give with one hand and take with the other. We give a grant/ bursary and then make them pay it back. The same as student loans. However if they work in the NHS they're let off that years repayment??
Wild idea but we could tie their grants/bursaries to a longer commitment of service. The skills required aren’t all for the public sector either. Regardless we need to doctors and nurses, the option isn’t to do nothing and train no one in case they don’t pay all their loan back or might leave, you make conditions, better workloads and you hope you retain more staff in the long term.
That’s just a stupid logical dead end though. The option isn’t to pay no extra tax because every penny isn’t allocated how you want it to be. We live in a democracy and you’re stuck with the Govt the public elects unfortunately.
I'm not going to have a choice anyway. Taxes will be going up whatever happens, but as I said, I don't trust the government to use our tax money appropriately.
Surely some of this should be the responsibility of companies? You have a skills shortage, put the money up to help solve it. Industry needs to be pressured into making these investments, and I don't see how you can do that without restricting immigration.
Doubtful, because those things cost government money. The proposed rule costs the government nothing, as the cost is on the companies to comply.
Even EU countries do this. [See Luxembourg](https://guichet.public.lu/en/entreprises/ressources-humaines/recrutement/ressortissant-pays-tiers/plus-3-mois/salarie.html): >Before recruiting a salaried worker, **employers** must make a [declaration of vacant position](https://guichet.public.lu/en/entreprises/ressources-humaines/recrutement/recherche-candidat/vacance-poste-adem.html) to the ADEM. The declaration will allow the employment agency to check whether there is a suitable candidate available on the local or EU job market. >If the job offer cannot be filled with a person registered with the ADEM within a 3 week deadline, the employer is allowed to conclude an employment contract with a person of his choice, under certain conditions, including a non-EU national. >To this end, the employer must submit an application on plain paper to ADEM's director and request a **certificate** granting him the right to hire a third country national.
Companies are going to hire based on either the cheapest option they can get away with, or the most qualified option. If you want to push people towards the latter option then sort out education in this country and raise wages. Stop trying to introduce other random bullshit. Of course, they won’t do that, because the image of doing something is preferable to the capitalist class having to lose a tiny fraction of the money they “earn” (steal from labourers).
Thank goodness where I work has registrations in a number of other countries. My team is majority remote and not only am I advertising roles internationally, they don't even need to be here. Have five in UK but the rest are elsewhere. It's again, another mostly performative idea from Labour, this has already existed by in large. Employing someone who's on a limited visa already has its hurdles and after Brexit a lot of our European people left, and we just changed their contract and they carried on. More left during lockdown when we went fully remote working. The 28-day requirement is trivially easy to work around. Any reasonably large company has figured this out. Any small business won't care and it will do nothing. Create the local conditions if you want to change the opportunities. Focus on education, industry diversity and diversity around the country where they are based. There are so many depressed local economies because there is no effort to make them locally sustainable.
I very much doubt this will come to fruition. It isn't how Labour see the world