Do I need to speak Polish to work here?

The phone rang yesterday afternoon and an unrecognisable male voice said "Dzien dobry" (hello). I hesitated as the caller didn't identify himself and there was silence on the line "Yes, hello?" I said in Polish and then I heard snickering "It's me, Dad. I've decided to learn Polish as it seems to be the only way to get a job here in England!"
What's that, I hear some of you asking, is my septuagenarian father looking for work? No, he was simply referring to an article in the Mail On Sunday about a cooked meat manufacturer who advertised for Polish speaking shift-workers because all the training and safety instructions would be in Polish. Adverts in local shops were in Polish only and stated that knowledge of English was not necessary. Naturally, a furor followed - complaints of discrimination against the British worker and of Eastern Europeans stealing jobs, but can we blame British employers for hiring the most hard-working, efficient job applicant?
I saw recently a BBC documentary The Day the Immigrants Left, where Brits took over migrant workers low paid jobs. Three different employers, the owner of an Indian restaurant, an asparagus grower (supplier to England's well-known supermarkets) and a potato-packing factory. The result was embarrassing beyond belief. After saying on camera how desperate they were to work and how grateful they were to be given this opportunity, three of the unemployed didn't even bother to show up for the first day. One 20 year old even thought it was acceptable to text his manager explaining that he wouldn't be coming in because he had had a late night. Only one person turned up at the restaurant to work as a waiter, but deemed it so 'stressful' that he couldn't continue. Ali, the restaurant owner appeared to possess great foresight however, for he had told his permanent staff that they had the day off but that they must be on stand-by. One phone call and they were all back to work. At the asparagus grower's it was slightly better. Here they did turn up for work, but that's where the improvement ends. The workers were payed by the ton of asparagus picked, but our English bunch didn't even manage to pick a ton between them. The Lithuanian foreman tried to impress on them the importance of speed (the asparagus season only lasts 8 weeks) but they were slow and wasteful, leaving half the vegetable still in the soil. The potato-packing plant scenario was similar. They were slow and where there should have been 12 bags in a crate, many only had 10. All of their work had to be recounted.
After seeing the program I'm not surprised Eastern Europeans are being hired over the English and if that means the first language at a factory in East Anglia is Polish then so be it. Many of today's unemployed don't know what a hard days work is but they are the first to tell you about labour law and their 'rights'. It's not just the UK who are suffering from this malaise though. In Germany, Arno Duebel has become notorious. He proudly admits that at the age of 54 he has been claiming benefits for 36 years!