The employment problems young indigenous Irish people face need to be addressed if future conflict with immigrants is to be avoided, writes Kate Holmquist.
Seventeen per cent of firms have vacancies, according to latest figures from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). So why is Glen Campbell (29), who lives in Santry, Dublin, long-term unemployed and feeling "bored, angry and penniless"? Despite sending out 250 CVs in the past 13 months, he is going through his longest period of unemployment since he left school after the Junior Cert in 1991.
He has done everything right, working on his CV and developing his interview skills at his local job centre, which confirms his account. He's licensed to drive a forklift and has applied for warehouse work in Finglas, Coolock, Blanchardstown and Tallaght. His entire family have been looking out for job opportunities for him.
Yet during the same period of time that Campbell was repeatedly rejected by employers - some of whom never bothered to acknowledge his applications - employment rose by 4.6 per cent, the highest rate of growth since 2000. There was so much work available that 46,000 of the 92,000 new jobs officially created in 2005 went to migrant workers born outside the State.
"Foreigners are coming in and working for less money," says Campbell. "Companies are using agencies to bring employees in from elsewhere. They don't want Irish people. I feel resentful towards the Government for letting this happen. They should stop the other nationalities from coming in and taking Irish jobs. If it continues, by 2020 there won't be any more Irish jobs."
Campbell isn't alone. Unemployment in the Finglas and Ballymun areas doubled to 10 per cent last year, according to official figures. But with many indigenous Irish people in their 20s not signing on due to their mistrust of the system, the figure could be higher, says Michael Creedon of Ballymun Job Centre. He estimates that the true rate of unemployment in Ballymun is 15-18 per cent.
"People assume that anyone who wants a job can get one, but there are pockets where people are experiencing difficulties, such as west Tallaght, Jobstown, Killinarden, Clondalkin, Neilstown, Finglas and certain areas of Limerick and Cork," he says. "Some may be individuals with particular characteristics that make it very difficult for them to access the labour market. If an employer has a choice between an early school-leaver with literacy issues and a third-level educated person from an accession state, it's a no-brainer. The ESRI have said that there is no displacement, but if they were to target particular groups, they might find the story somewhat different."
The unemployment rate has doubled from one in 10 to one in five for under-25s with Leaving Certs. For early school-leavers, the situation is even worse. "Unskilled jobs are now so poorly paid that it's hardly worth it for them to work," says Creedon.
JOANNE O'TOOLE (17) left school during fifth year because she "couldn't get along with the people there". She and her mother are both unemployed, even though O'Toole has been job-hunting since July 2005. The only job she has managed to find paid €5 an hour - well below the minimum wage of €7.65 per hour - and she was expected to work a 50-hour week.
"Immigrants will work for that wage because it's far more than they would earn at home, but it's not enough to make it worth my while," says O'Toole.
"Many early school-leavers are not even receiving replies when they send in their CVs and job applications," says Tracy Hickson, project worker with Opt-In, run by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) in Finglas. Sixty per cent of these unwanted job-seekers are young, indigenous Irish males.
"Almost unemployable" is how Sally Anne Kinahan, Ictu advocacy director, describes this growing group of young people, who are being socially excluded, a phenomenon that is a predictable side-effect of globalisation and the thriving migrant labour market.
IN 2002, THE national training and employment authority, Fás, carried out an analysis of the potential labour supply and found that the majority of work permits had been issued for work in unskilled occupations for which there appeared to be a sizeable supply of local labour. A report by the International Organisation for Migration, commissioned by the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), warns that immigration has the potential to generate adverse effects during an economic downturn. The State's failure to protect local workers is a "serious weakness" in its current labour immigration system, it states.
"Rising youth unemployment is a sign that we're falling into all the traps, as in the UK and France," says Mark Harding, of Finglas Job Centre. "We're ghettoising people and making no attempt at integration. The dark side will rear its ugly head when we have the inevitable downturn in the economy. In 1999, when we had a slight downturn, our young people were blaming migrant workers and we saw potential for conflict. Clearly they were wrong in their analysis, but their anger was serious and we had to work with them to address their attitudes.
"Something has to be done to integrate not just migrants, but our own young unemployed indigenous Irish into the society.They need further training, education and motivation to participate, or we will see huge problems."
An excluded indigenous "underclass" who cannot compete with better educated, socially appealing migrants appears to be developing, although it's hard to prove it without the necessary research, says Prof James Wickham, of the Employment Research Centre in the sociology department of Trinity College Dublin. Employers in certain areas want "aesthetic labour" that makes the right impression.
"The white working class get marginalised, don't speak in the right sort of way, don't fit win with the identity of certain services, don't dress properly," says Wickham. "They could be taught these things, but employers don't need to [ do this] when there are so many migrants available. All the evidence points in this direction, but we don't know for sure."
Many employers are engaging in "short-termism", Wickham believes, seeking no more than the cheapest labour they can find with no concern for building human capital. When the economy flops, the migrants will leave for the country that takes Ireland's place as the next economic miracle and employers will be left with a workforce of low-skilled locals who have been under- utilised and under-educated during the boom. And this underclass may feel increasingly resentful for having been excluded during the good times.
"In an economic downturn, it's possible that the riff-raff could be employed to turn against immigrants with a bit of straightforward racial violence," Wickham says. "Foreign students are already being subjected to racist attacks. The potential is there, but nobody wants to play with that one.
"The mentality of short-termism enables us to dodge many serious policy issues, such as childcare, which worries me."
Bringing in childless migrants means employers don't have to hire women with children and can avoid developing childcare policies and family-friendly work practices.
WOMEN ATTEMPTING TO re-enter the workforce are also big losers, says Kinahan. Single mothers are finding it impossible to find jobs that pay enough for them to afford childcare. Although 27,000 Irish women re-entered the workforce last year, many women who have reared families are still finding it impossible to gain a foothold.
Margaret McMahon (36), a mother of four children, has been looking for work for two years. The six-month computer course, interview skills course and work experience she has undertaken have been of no help. She has been advised to tell employers that she has no children, but does not want to lie.
"If we continue with growth for growth's sake, we will increasingly see polarisation of the very rich and the very, very poor, and things will disintegrate," says Kinahan. "Look at France and the rise of the ultra-right there, we are walking ourselves into that situation blindfolded, rather than learning from those mistakes."
Ian Bruff, of the University of Liverpool, spent a year at TCD's Employment Research Centre studying the job market in this "historically unprecedented" time.
"The booming economy masks the fact that the skill-set of the Irish population is quite low - only one quarter have third-level qualifications, compared to two-thirds of immigrants," Bruff says. "It appears that many companies are not recruiting and training local people. You can't prove it, but from interviewing migrants it was clear that many had amazing qualifications and were willing to work in relatively low-skilled work because the pay was so much higher than in their home countries."
Some 800 indigenous Irish left jobs in hotels, restaurants and catering last year, while 3,600 "non-Irish nationals" were taken on in the sector, according to the Central Statistics Office.
But there are responsible employers in catering who refuse to hire for less than the minimum wage and who want to develop young, local people, according to Tony Moyles, instructor with Fás's hospitality training programme in Finglas, which has a 70 per cent success rate in placing its graduates in jobs.
Michael Bradley (17), who started the course this week, has been unemployed since leaving school at 14 but is now hopeful that he will get work in catering. "I don't blame migrants for my situation. They don't affect me," he says.
Kinahan insists, however, that less responsible employers are making subtle changes in workplaces which drive indigenous Irish employees out so that they can be replaced by migrants willing to work for low wages.
Patricia King, Siptu regional secretary in Dublin, says the union has evidence that in the retail sector migrant workers are being paid less for the same work and being deprived of sick-pay and over-time bonuses. Rather than advertising jobs, employers in retail are going straight to migrant worker agencies because they see migrants as more productive and "flexible" than local Irish workers, who won't put up with lesser conditions.
Some employers are "off-loading" Irish staff by making the workplace unpleasant, "typically, you hear workers say, this place has gone to hell", she says. Redundancy offers start to appear attractive and soon Irish staff with pensions and other entitlements are replaced by a much lower-cost migrant workforce.
"You can say that the Irish Ferries situation was a blip in the system, but it's becoming increasingly apparent that this is the new Ireland, in which a policy of displacement of current workers is in force. Some employers will say that this is the only route open to them due to competitive pressure," King says.