Difficult For Visitors To Britain To Find Jobs

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31318, 14 March 1967, Page 15

Difficult For Visitors To Britain To Find Jobs

(By

J. A. EAGLES)

LONDON. About 600,000 people are unemployed in Britain. So jobs which are difficult enough for Britons to get are infinitely harder for the newlyarrived visitor to find. Many visitors who arrive in London expecting to find fame and fortune are before long glad to take jobs washing dishes, peeling potatoes or carrying suitcases.

Other visitors, including some affected by the increasingly tight regulations controlling the transfer of funds from New Zealand to Britain, find it necessary to cut short their stay and return home.

The economic squeeze in Britain, which has put thousands out of work and made life harder for thousands more, has had severe effects on the hundreds of visitors from Commonwealth countries who pour into the country every month on working holidays.

Newspapers in London still advertise thousands of jobs every day, and those with special qualifications or experience in shorthand-typing, clerical work, accountancy and bookkeeping or hospital and laboratory work have little difficulty in obtaining work.

But for moat other jobs—for salesmen and women, cleaners, warehousemen, porters, shop assistants, packers, ushers and even dishwashers —London experience is regarded as essential. Perhaps because there are insufficient jobs for their own countrymen, many British people feel very strongly about “foreigners” even foreigners from places like New Zealand and Australia—who increase the competition for the few jobs available. Many are not reluctant to say so. Employers Hesitant For this reason, and because the visitors rarely remain in a job longer than a few months, employers are hesitant about hiring them. Often the twang of a nonEnglish accent on the telephone is sufficient to make an employer or agency say: “Sorry, we can’t help you.” An Australian school

teacher, Mr R. Taylor, rang a staff agency in London to inquire about an advertisement for kitchen porters—a job entailing peeling potatoes, washing dishes and sweeping floors.

“I told the agency woman a story about my vast experience in kitchen porting,” said Mr Taylor, “and she wanted to know exactly where I had worked. When I said I had had jobs all over Australia she said: ‘Oh, I'm sorry, we can’t take anyone who hasn’t had London experience.’ "As if they wash their dishes or peel their potatoes a special way in London! I think the only reason they didn’t want me was that I was an Australian.” Australians Not Wanted A Londoner, who returned home recently after living in Australia for three years, had trouble finding a job because of the Australian accent he acquired. “I telephoned one office about a job,” he said, “and the chap wanted to know if I came from Australia. I said I did and started to explain that I was bom in London and had been in Australia only three yean when he hung up in my ear. “I can’t wait to get back to Australia. This sort of thing doesn’t happen there.” A representative of an employment bureau in London said that, although jobs were still plentiful, there were far more applicants for every position than before the squeeze began. “Anyone not pulling his weight in a firm, someone who might otherwise have been carried by an employer has been culled out Staff

have been cut down to a minimum by most firms because of the selective employment tax. More Selective “Employers are now very, very choosey and they will take only people ideally suited to a job—people who are prepared to make a career of it Because of the number of applicants for every position, they are able to be more selective and they tend to discard the overseas visitor who is looking for only a temporary position.'* New Zealand school teachers, who before leaving their country were given the impression that a shortage of teachers had made good jobs easy to come by in Britain, have been among the most disillusioned. Teachers who qualified in New Zealand after 1962—when three-year training was introduced in Britain—are not accepted as qualified teachers. Those falling into this group—and it includes most of the young teachers visiting Britain—are offered only poorly paid positions as unqualified teachers.

Teacher Carrying Bags

Mr L. K. Holland, who started teaching in New Zealand in 1964, said: “It’s ridiculous to think that in spite of the teaching I have done in New Zealand I am not accepted as a qualified teacher here. I could have had a job man unqualified teacher, but

the paltry wage wasn’t worth the effort.

“I have a job now as a porter, carrying bags and running messages, where I am earning more than I would have got by teaching and have none of the teacher’s worry and responsibility.’’ Mr Holland said a major reason why many people took up teaching was the assurance that they would find good jobs overseas without difficulty. “My experience here rather makes nonsense of the poster advertising teaching in New Zealand, which claims that teaching opens the door to world travel and to jobs overseas. Someone ought to warn young people back in New Zealand that this is a load of rubbish. They aren’t regarded as qualified teachers here." Higher Living Costs

In addition to the difficulty in finding jobs, visitors to Britain also face increased living costs. Although clothes, furniture, electrical goods and cars are much cheaper than in New Zealand, basic items like bread and butter (in spite of the removal of subsidies in New Zealand), milk and meat are more expensive, and rents for flats are two or three times higher. The difficulty about having a working holiday in Britain now is not so much having a a good holiday, which is easy, but finding a job so the holiday may end and the working part begin.