Fancy, being cared for by a foreign national, in your terminal years on a cost basis, what the heck, if that person don’t even speak your tongue 
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Was it just and only the unions? Somehow even more extreme union action in France still left a thriving car industry and other industries. And in the UK, it seems very likely that manufacturing and call centres and lots of other work would have gone to cheaper countries. Companies are all about reducing costs. So even a compliant work force would have lost their jobs. Large corporations and poor politicians just like excuse - oh it was the unions.
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I’ve no idea. Some folk coming in do not have the right to work so work on the black. That will be for lower wages - if nothing else such workers have very little bargaining power. Others with full working visas have all the protections and pay rights as everyone else - so no impact on wages, up or down.
What could be argued is that more people in paid employment in the country (and there are scary numbers of not working, not in education / training, not caring for others) the better. This means more tax revenue, means more spending, means companies can sell more, etc. So overall a beneficial impact on the UK economy.
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As you are well aware Lincs, things are never just black and white.
There were several reasons why the UK lost it’s manufacturing and industry and the unions were just one of them. Rubbish governments were another, joining the EU was another, and going global was the final straw. We can’t possibly compete with overseas companies that do not adhere to net zero or any other green limitations and rules that our companies are made to follow…So there’s another reason…Net Zero and our obsession with saving the planet.
Not to mention the comfy warm workplaces that the unions fought so hard for when our rivals work for a bowl of rice in sweatshops…
If you’re going to go global, we should all follow the same rules.
Same goes for Ai 
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I was making a very simple point - without the trade unions we would not have the majority of the worker rights and benefits that we enjoy today. In fact we would not have had, most likely, the Labour party. And without the Labour party we would not have the NHS. Without unions the UK would be a lot like the US is today - the rich, the companies and the owners of companies would be able to prevent most of the benefits and support ordinary people have today. And take for granted.
Edit - example of how bad employment gets when a country completely fails to support its people against the ways companies exploit them. In the messed up health system in the US hospitals (all private) prefer to take on agency nurses rather than take the costs (and risks of unions coming) full time employed staff. There are 4 major nursing staff agencies. This link a potential nurse to that nurses credit score. The lower the score (most likely the more in debt and struggling the nurse) then the agency offers them lower pay - on the basis that more desperate people will accept worse pay. The hospital does not care. That’s how well unchecked capitalism works.
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Perhaps Lincs, but you can’t compete in a global market while ever you are cosseting the workers because other countries won’t.
There have been strange going on’s of late, all the pay differentials for different job types and responsibilities, that the unions fought for have been eroded away in the raising of the minimum wage, over the past half decade.
Since 2020, the minimum wage has increased by nearly 50% (which is an out and out good thing), but the rest of the lower paid have not had increases anywhere near that so, by default, now find themselves on or just above the minimum wage, so, their future annual increments are going to come via government policy on wages, not by merit on behalf of the employee, or, from recognition of the employer.
The point here is when did the sea change come on this from a Unions perspective, surely it was part of their remit, to keep the pay differentials in place over this time of great change!
Indeed its been a few decades of erosion of wages as viewed from cost of living rises. Of course, not so much for executives whose salaries have gone through the roof. They are hugely incentivised to suppress worker pay or simply remove workers - so that is what they have done. It has also been great years for people with existing money which they invested in stocks and properties. Those have also increased in value massively. This has meant a concentration of wealth with a few, a much greater percentage of the nation’s wealth retained by a few and necessarily less of a percentage to be shared by everyone else.
Today’s unions make comment on this but no more than that. They are busy working against pay suppression and erosion of worker rights / conditions.
Governments have been unwilling to do anything about this either - as witnessed by the boom in the gig economy and in zero hour employment contracts.
I do not understand your position here. I thought that you are very much for bringing work back to the UK. But you also see lower wages / cheaper work conditions in other countries as something UK businesses would have to compete against. So it seems that you are advocating poorly bad jobs in bad work conditions with bad employment contracts for UK workers…?
Not sure that “advocating” is the right term. More an acceptance of the inevitable.
How could the UK compete?
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Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish leaders meet to plan break-up of United Kingdom.
It is probably why they want to leave the UK because of the bad politics going on in England.
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Could you provide a link to what you’re basing your claims on? Thanks.
Are you suggesting that it is inevitable, were more manufacturing return to the UK, that there would only be badly paid jobs that come with poor employment conditions?
If so, why seek to return manufacturing to the UK?
Not sure about “only”. But there would undoubtedly be some which, like it or not, would increase tax revenue and generate internal wealth.
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You are right about that of course.
However my point was more about the need to retain decent pay and good employment conditions. The idea that competing for manufacturing capability should not necessitate competing for lower and lower standards of work. The claim that such a decline inevitable and workers are used to getting it too easy is the claim of the lazy, mean capitalist. So I have no idea why ordinary people should buy into that claim.
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Dex is correct, I’m not ‘advocating’ anything, I’m just pointing out the inevitable and the only way around it is either close the borders to cheap imports and make our own stuff and accept the prices we must pay. As I’ve said elsewhere, one of the problems with the throwaway world we live in today is the fact that we are not paying enough for things to represent their real value to us or indeed the planet. It’s very nice to import cheap stuff, but it also makes it less valuable overall, and the cost makes it uneconomical to repair, so we throw it away and buy a new one. It also raises the problems of what do we do with all the rubbish?
There is less proper work done in the UK as a result of farming out manufacturing to the far east and so the people with the most money are investors and CEO’s of mega companies while the skilled workman and labourer are left with nothing to do, so why not send them all to university and give them qualifications in jobs we don’t need and they will probably never do…Wait a minute! 
But at least it gets them off the unemployment list.
The main reason why Britain was successful in the past was because we made lots of stuff here and exported some of it…Nobody made stuff like we did, but now everyone makes stuff, and a lot cheaper than we can, thanks to the unions, so Britain is full of academics, bean counters, accountants, investors and over educated young people who can’t even afford a house.
Let me digest all that.
So rather than accepting low pay / poor conditions for UK workers you are saying that the UK needs to make things here and such things will be much more expensive. Therefore to prevent lower cost imports of these things you are also saying that some import controls would be needed - I guess tariffs. Therefore people would be paying a lot more for just about everything. This would of course mean a significant hike in the inflation rate. This would mean all workers, not just the guys in these new manufacturing jobs, would demand more pay. That would most likely lead to lay-offs across all sectors. And it would also lead to the BoE raising interest rates to combat the inflation. That would lead to economic slow down, higher costs of borrowing, less spending money in the system - in other words recession.
Have you thought this through?