M Wilson (Letters, June 15) is right to highlight that the Brighton and Hove economy floats on the back of poverty wages and desperate housing shortages for large numbers of workers.

He is in cloud-cuckoo land, however, if he thinks the reason for this is wage competition from asylum seekers.

The real reason is the lack of a culture of trade union organisation in key sectors of the city's economy, such as care, leisure and call centres, and the attacks on unions by the governments of both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

Building workers previously had some chance of protected decent pay and secure employment in local authority direct labour departments until the onslaught of privatisation.

What is putting up property prices in Brighton and Hove is one of the lowest ratios of social housing in the country, gentrification and unscrupulous private landlords.

As three of these workers, on roughly £6.30 an hour (less than half the European Union's "decency threshold") and with, between us, 33 years of experience in this sector, we do not speak lightly.

-David Bangs, Norman Cabuzet and Philip Armstrong, Ewhurst Road, Brighton