‘Orange alert’ for eastern and central European workers

The Dutch Social Affairs and Employment Minister, Lodewijk Asscher, and the Director of the British Demos thinktank David Goodhart, warn the European Union against the "negative consequences" of the arrival of workers from eastern and central Europe, in a comment article published in Dutch daily De Volkskrant and in British daily The Independent. Just as there is an "orange alert" when rivers in the Netherlands reach dangerous levels, so such an alert system is needed for high levels of migrant workers. Existing restrictions on the free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians will be lifted on January 1, 2014 in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

This will lead to "wage dumping" on the part of workers from eastern and central Europe to the detriment of local, low-skilled labour, argue Asscher and Goodhart, while those with better educations benefit from free movement. The authors suggest that fines be imposed on companies that exploit these migrant workers by paying them according to the wage regulations set by their countries of origin. For *De Volkskrant, this raises the question of the need for wage agreements at the European level.

However, Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg condemns the lack of "concrete proposals" and proof that "migrating for work is in fact toxic" in the article, in his column published in De Volkskrant. Grunberg adds that

Immigration for economic reasons is probably associated with some abuse. Some immigrant workers, for example, are paid less than the [local] minimum wage. But just because people sometimes take public transport without paying does not mean we should scrap it. Most economists know, in fact, that a minimum wage has hardly any positive effects.

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