Daily Mail
December 14, 2013
The Unite union is offering to teach unemployed Romanians and Bulgarians how to claim benefits in Britain.
The organisation, Labour’s biggest donor, is courting foreigners from the two countries as part of a membership drive.
It offers the advice as a reward for signing up to the union.
It has even issued membership forms in Romanian and Bulgarian, despite the Government – and Labour – saying immigrants should learn English.
The unemployed are offered the chance to join the union for just 50p a week. In return, Unite says it will offer new arrivals with advice on how to maximise benefit claims.
The decision to target Romanians and Bulgarians is sure to be controversial, given public concern about the lifting of immigration controls on the two new EU countries at the end of this month.
Ministers have refused to estimate how many immigrants will arrive from the two impoverished countries – but some experts believe it could run to hundreds of thousands in the coming years.
Tory MP Priti Patel called Unite’s behaviour shameless, adding: ‘It is incredibly irresponsible and I’m afraid it just sums up the attitude of Labour and the trade unions towards EU immigration.
‘Labour is the party that opened the floodgates to EU immigration with its open borders policy.
Now their allies in the union movement are basically encouraging people to come here, and offering them advice on how to exploit our benefits system when they arrive. It gives the lie to the idea that Labour is finally getting serious about immigration.’
In recent years Unite, led by Len McCluskey, has directly targeted immigrant workers in a bid to swell its membership – and coffers.