People taking up work experience places – providing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour – face losing benefits if they quit
Britain's jobless young people are being sent to work for supermarketsand budget stores for up to two months for no pay and no guarantee of a job, the Guardian can reveal.
Under the government's work experience programme young jobseekers are exempted from national minimum wage laws for up to eight weeks and are being offered placements in Tesco, Poundland, Argos, Sainsbury's and a multitude of other big-name businesses.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) says that if jobseekers "express an interest" in an offer of work experience they must continue to work without pay, after a one-week cooling-off period or face having their benefits docked.Young people have told the Guardian that they are doing up to 30 hours a week of unpaid labour and have to be available from 9am to 10pm.
In three such cases jobseekers also claim they were not told about the week's cooling-off period, and that once they showed a willingness to take part in the scheme they were told by their case manager they would be stripped of their £53- a-week jobseekers allowance (JSA) if they backed out.
The Guardian has also learned that lawyers are mounting a legal challenge to a separate work experience scheme known as mandatory work activity, which they argue represents a form of slavery under the Human Rights Act (HRA).... (emphasis added)Read the rest at The Guardian
by Shiv Malik
(BTW, the author's first name is Hindu and the family name is Muslim. That's definitely multiculturalism.)
Isn't this the same thing they are doing down south. I would hope they would train people to jobs that are a liitle more complex. Anyone can walk into a supermarket and be productive in very little time. This is just wrong.
ReplyDeleteRodneyrondeaujr, Re the idea that “I would hope they would train people to jobs that are a liitle more complex” we have hoards of unemployed graduates. The consumer just doesn’t want their services. The consumer wants those boring supermarket shelves stacked. I suggest the consumer should what the consumer wants.
ReplyDeleteRe the Guardian article, there has been an orgy of articles by leftie journalists recently in Britain trying to appear more concerned than thou about the unemployed. Instead of deriding the idea the unemployed be allocated to employers for free, I wish they’d ponder the possibilities of this idea. In particular, if aggregated demand is inadequate in nominal terms, allocating the unemployed to employers for free is an idea with potential: it tends to reduce prices (or cause them to rise slower than they otherwise would). And a cut in prices given constant AD in nominal terms equals a rise in AD in real terms.
Just recruit them into the Army & send them to war. It's what the British government has been itching to do for a long, long time.
ReplyDeleteNow that the Libyan war has proven fruitful for the UK, expect more of the same.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteJust a point of clarification. "Malik" just means ruler or rather owner. So typically, the landed, feudal castes were called "Malik". So in India, a "Malik" could be either a Hindu, Muslim, or even a Christian. This was just an adoption of an Arabic word for local use, during the period where India was greatly influenced by Muslim culture.
Thanks, Clonal. My thought was that Shiva and Malik are both names of God, in Sanskrit and Arabic respectively. Interesting contrast.
ReplyDeleteI find things like this disgraceful to be honest, if a company needs to hire then they should at least pay the minimum wage. No man or woman should have the right to force someone into something against their will.
ReplyDelete"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise." - John Stuart Mill