Scandal claim over EU website job ads
Ten?of thousands of jobs in the West Midlands are being advertised to overseas workers via a European Union scheme, it was revealed today.
Dudley North MP Ian Austin is demanding an explanation after finding that 33,000 vacancies, including hundreds in the Black Country and Staffordshire, were being promoted online via the Europa Job Mobility website funded by taxpayers.
The jobs are uploaded to the website by Jobcentre Plus, which also advertises them locally.
Labour MP Mr Austin said the scheme was a scandal at a time when scores of public sector jobs are being axed in the region.
The website lists 41 NHS jobs in the Black Country – including 25 nursing posts – when 2,300 frontline nursing jobs have been lost since 2010. The jobs included 21 posts in Dudley, three in Sandwell, nine in Wolverhampton and eight in Walsall. In manufacturing, nine jobs are offered in Dudley, six in Wolverhampton and five in Walsall. There are 26 jobs in sales and marketing offered on the Europa website, 18 of them in Wolverhampton.
A motor vehicle practitioner instructor in Staffordshire on a salary of up to £23,382 is being advertised. Teaching posts account for a large proportion of the 33,911 jobs advertised in the West Midlands. Around 74 of them have been advertised in the Black Country, including 20 at schools and colleges in Dudley.
In Wolverhampton, which has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the country, a vacancy has been posted for a job as a trainee chef at a city hotel. The hotel has not been named but the job is advertised as having a weekly wage of £104 with training provided to get the successful applicant through an apprenticeship along with numeracy and literacy skills and a full technical certificate.
There were 2,301 jobs for teaching professionals in the West Midlands advertised today. By comparison, in the Rhone-Alps region of France, which includes Birmingham's twin city Lyon, there were 44.
Mr Austin has called on the Government to explain why it is promoting public sector jobs abroad while sacking public sector workers at home.
A DWP spokesperson said: "All EU countries are obliged to share their job vacancies and this has been happening for nearly two decades. In the UK our advisers focus their attention on helping British jobseekers who want to travel abroad to work, as well as discouraging applications from outside the UK to sectors where there is already a lot of competition for jobs."
