A racism inquiry was under way last night after a firm advertised a £38,000-a-year job for someone 'preferably of Indian origin'.
The advert was placed on a popular recruitment website on behalf of a computer company based in Britain and India.
It stated: 'Minimum six years of experience in IT . . . The person should be a UK citizen with security clearance from the UK Government. Preferably of Indian origin.'
Spokesman Farhaan Majid for recruitment agency McGregor-Boyall Associates said: 'Some companies prefer to employ people of Indian origin because they are immediately available and don't mind moving.
'Often people in Britain . . . have mortgages and don't want to move.'
British workers are routinely being denied jobs in factories and food processing firms in favour of foreign applicants, the equality watchdog has found.
The problem was highlighted yesterday when it emerged that one company has been advertising for Polish-speaking staff only.
The effective ban on British applicants for jobs at Forza AW, which is Asda's biggest cooked meat supplier, was claimed to be because all health and safety training is carried out in Polish.
But the Equality and Human Rights Commission separately found that in many firms, places are being handed to migrant workers because they are easier to exploit and often receive terrible pay and work conditions.
They are also favoured over British applicants because they are considered to be harder working and less likely to complain.
Details emerged in the commission's report into the meat and poultry processing industry, which found that 'most (recruitment) agencies had experience of firms breaching the Race Relations Act in asking for workers from specific countries'.
A third also admitted acting unlawfully by supplying workers based on what nationality they thought the processing firm would prefer or following 'direct requests' from clients.
Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green said the situation exploded the myth of Gordon Brown's promise to create 'British jobs for British workers'.
He said: 'He must regret ever saying that because it has proved a cruel deception for millions of the unemployed.'
Forza, which supplies several supermarkets and has a £140million turnover and 600 employees, is temporarily leasing space at a Bernard Matthews site in Great Witchingham, near Norwich, after a fire at its West Yorkshire plant.
Its advert was sent to hundreds of potential applicants on the of East Anglia-based employment agency OSR Recruitment earlier this month. It said: 'Applicants must speak Polish. Please call asap!'
One job hunter who received the email contacted OSR last Tuesday and was asked if he spoke Polish before being told: 'You have to be fluent because the health and safety training is all done in Polish.'
Any refusal to register a job applicant because of their nationality is unlawful under the Race Relations Act.
Forza chief executive Max Hilliard claimed the advert happened because of a 'breakdown in communications' between his firm and OSR and he hadn't seen the final version before its release. 'In normal circumstances, this ad would have been vetted and the error removed,' he said.
Around 88,000 people work in the meat and poultry industry. A third of the permanent work force and 70 per cent of agency workers are migrants.
The commission spoke to 260 workers as well as 190 meat and poultry processing firms and 131 recruitment agencies for its report.
Director general Neil Kinghan said: 'The commission will be writing to Forza AW this week to ask it to respond to the allegations and to confirm that it will not discriminate against British, or any other workers, on the grounds of their nationality.'
According to today’s Guardian, when referring to a factory in Llanelli, Wales:
‘Agency workers are said to make up 30% of the factory workforce, and to be paid less than local permanent staff, employed on poorer terms with no guarantee of work, even though some of them are semi-permanent. Agency workers are on so called "zero hours contracts" which means they can be required to work from 5pm to 3am and, they allege, be made to stay on for overtime until 6am at the same basic minimum wage rate one day, but laid off without notice the next. Permanent workers have guaranteed work and are paid a premium for overtime.’
But this is just a drop in the ocean according to The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s figures which were taken between March 1997 and March 2007. The OECD revealed that 70% of jobs created under the Labour Government have been taken by foreign-born workers. 1.5million of the 2million jobs created in the first ten years of Labour rule were taken by people born abroad; work permits to non-EU nationals have been handed out in record numbers ever since.
The OECD states that ‘around a third of the migrant workers arrived here on controversial intracompany transfers’. This system allows international companies to transfer their staff to the UK for ‘limited periods’. The truth is that staff can stay for up to three years, followed by a two-year extension, and finally an application for settlement. The offending companies do not have to advertise the posts in the UK first.
When Labour came into power in 1997, 42,800 permits were handed out; 2007 saw 129,700 approvals and in 2008, a further 151, 653 issued despite hundreds of thousands of British workers losing their jobs. Don't forget these are non-EU permits. There are currently nearly 4million migrant workers in the UK
There are now 2.26million people unemployed in the UK, compared with 2.03 in January 2009. Economists predict that number will rise to over 3million next spring. So WHY is the government encouraging even more foreigners to come here? We know we are not benefiting from mass immigration.
You only have to look around our hospitals to see that!
