AMAZON RECRUITS ALMOST ALL OF ITS STAFF HERE FROM OUTSIDE OF THE EU

There has been some fretting in the past two days over the possible impact of the European Court of Justice decision to uphold a 2016 finding by the European Commission that Apple in Ireland had been using the Irish tax system as a means to avoid paying tax at a higher rate on its global earnings. 

A surreal debate has ensued over what if anything the Irish government ought to do with the €13 billion+ that was “resting in an escrow account” pending the decision.  In some quarters suggesting doing anything at all with it has led to mild expressions of horror.  

Are people afraid that Apple might overhear them and uproot themselves and leave? Perhaps the state could get around this by putting the cash in a plastic bag and depositing it at one of their offices with a note attached saying “Sorry about all of this.  Get yourselves something nice and don’t blame us.”

Some have taken patriotic umbrage at the notion of the EU interfering with the way that the giant corporations do business here. “Wolfe Tone didn’t go to see all those Celtic matches during the Famine just so a bunch of communists could stop us being a tax haven.”  

In a piece published by Peter Ryan, he questions the received wisdom that all immigration is a positive means to “redress the demographic imbalance.”  We are all familiar by now with the mantra that if we do not have mass immigration accounting for 90% of population growth over the next 30 years and beyond then the country will collapse.

While much of that debate tends to the view that immigration from outside of the EU/EEA does constitute a fiscal drain, the implication is that this only applies to asylum seekers and other persons more likely to become social welfare dependents.  Is that true though?  

Every immigrant, whether they are working or not, adds to demand for all manner of things. Of course, if they are paying income tax then they are contributing to some of the costs, but it is obvious that immigration has contributed hugely to the demands on housing, transport, health, schools and other sectors.  The question is whether there is the proper balance. 

Especially when, as I pointed out in relation to Apple itself, the large corporations are recruiting predominantly from overseas.  Work permits show that in the case of Apple that the majority of new jobs filled in recent years have been taken by persons who have come to live in the state to work.  

That is most starkly seen in the work permits statistics for another tech giant, Amazon.  They do good public relations but the reality of their claims regarding job creation here, echoed by Government ministers and the media, is rather different to the perception. 

In August 2022, when Amazon opened a new sorting facility at Baldonnell, county Dublin, it said that 500 jobs would be created there and that recruitment was already underway for jobs beginning at a rate of €13.50 per hour.  

In July 2020, so important was the announcement by Amazon that it was to take on 1,000 new people in its Irish based facilities that Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste and then Minister for Enterprise Leo Varadkar and Martin Shanahan of the IDA were enticed, maskless, out of their Covid Bunker to join two Amazon Ireland executives for the happy tidings.

Amazon said that they would have 5,000 people working for them here by 2022 and that this would “help to support Ireland’s economic recovery.”  There would be all sorts of jobs created from data software engineers and solutions architects to non-technical program managers and accounts managers.

There would also be wind farms for Amazon are the boys and girls who were going to have 100% of their electricity needs supplied by renewable energy by 2025 as part of becoming zero carbon by 2040. The company also ticks all the right boxes on Pride, and in 2020 gave a whack of tax free dollars to Black Lives Matter. 

At the July 2020 announcement, Ireland country manager Mike Beary said that “This latest jobs announcement by Amazon and AWS is a further vote of confidence in the skills and talent of Irish people.” Tánaiste Leo Varadkar acclaimed it as “a huge vote of confidence in Ireland’s economy and workforce.”

This is where you need fact checkers – for the reason that the jobs spiel was nothing remotely resembling a “vote of confidence” in Ireland’s workforce and the talents of Irish people.  How do I know this?  For the reason that since 2020 Amazon has issued 3,164 work permits for persons from outside of the EU/EEA taking up positions in Ireland.  Which does not include persons from other EU countries who do not require a permit.

So how many of the promised jobs; of the 1,000 new ones announced in July 2020 or the 500 at the Baldonnell site have gone to Irish people?  Very few if any would be an accurate guess given that in 2022 alone, Amazon took on 1,394 people from outside the EU/EEA on work permits.

Over the period between 2020 and 2022 when Amazon said that it intended to employ another 1,000 people in its facilities here, it was issued with 2,320 new work permits for persons from outside of the EU and EEA. I sent a number of queries to Amazon about their workforce here but have received no response.  

The figures do not even add up so is it the case that many of those who come here to work for Amazon do not stay that long? Some online discussion involving people who have worked for the company in the United States would indicate that they do have a very high turnover rate in staff.  That may or may not be the same here. 

What is certainly apparent is that Amazon overwhelmingly employs people who are not Irish.  Which begs the question as to what actual benefit having them and other corporations with similar hiring policies is to the state, other than the tax revenue from corporation tax.  

No doubt some will greet that with guffaws as few commentators here on the role of the big corporations see beyond the tax.  There is little or no questioning of the added costs to the economy in terms of housing and a whole range of services, all of which contribute to public spending. Neither is the broader societal impact discussed: the impact which this has where ordinary citizens are in competition for everything from a place to live to school places and even a seat on the bus.  Is the tax take sufficient to cover all of this?

Put bluntly, if it is the case that the corporations are mostly employing persons who come here from overseas then the relationship of the Irish state, economy and society to them is one of dependence.  The near panic at the notion that Apple and others might take umbrage at the EU tax ruling paints an unflattering picture of the mentality of those who run Ireland Inc.

Is the state no more than a convenience for companies whose chief if not only reason for being here is to benefit from the taxation structure? If that is the case then they need to be honest about it.  For it means that all the demographic and social change which underpin their “vision” of what the state is becoming and will be like is little more than a function of global Capital.

If people are happy about that, and the fact that the demographic makeup of the state is inexorably heading towards a situation where the native born and descended population of Ireland will be lower than almost any country on the planet then so be it.  If that is the case then we shall be less a nation and more a subsidiary. 

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