Local jobs and foreign investments

Hundreds of employees staged walkouts across the UK over the use of foreign staff at a Lincolnshire refinery.

Should jobs go to local workers?

It’s laudable that local people should have local jobs. But there are jobs that the locals disdain to do like construction and farming. The Gulf States have to rely on foreign workers mainly from the Indian Subcontinent because they have relatively a small population compared to the needed development activities and the locals can accept only activities related to office work or trade, which has resulted in high unemployment among the young.

A protectionist approach isn’t the best solution as this means the world economy will shrink even further because of reduced economic exchanges. This will mainly have negative effect on poor countries whose economy depends on exports to rich countries and remittance from their immigrant populations. Countries should instead protect local jobs as long as there are those who can do them efficiently. Depriving the locals from them will lead just to social unrest.

However, there are jobs that only foreigners are renowned to be good at. In the UK, Polish worker , for example, are still highly needed for repair services. This leads to ask which category of foreign workers should be disposed of for the benefit of the locals.

Protectionism will mean the end of many economic agreements between different countries as it will mean the end of many economic blocs like the EU,G8 and ASIAN.
What is needed is economic restructuring that can allow national economies to grow and to expand beyond the borders. The biggest losers of protectionism will be the emerging economies, like those of India and China, whose success largely depend on exports.

It’s no good news for anyone that the world economy should shrink as it will put backward many poor and developing countries as it will lead a fall in the living standard of the citizens of developed country. There should be mechanism to revive the national economy without jeopardizing the existing international trade agreements.

In Morocco, there are many sectors that are managed by foreign companies although the workers are all Moroccans, except at the administrative level where there are some foreigners.

In Casablanca, the largest city in Morocco, water , electricity , sewage and litter collection are managed by French companies. In Marrakesh, all the buses are managed by a Spanish company because the municipality company went bankrupt because of mismanagement.

In the case of Morocco, there are locals who do most of the jobs. There are very few foreign workers. This means, it’s possible to create jobs for the locals, but there are still sectors that should be managed by foreign companies because of the lack of transparency and good managements when they are in the hands of the nationals.