"Unpaid" work like stacking shelves and cleaning floors is slave labour…

… apparently.

Although, not according to Sir Stuart Rose (ex head of M&S) who started his working life, er, stacking shelves and cleaning floors… 🙂

Today’s BH-Suck-Pool is brought to you by Percy Pig and Pals.

🙂

In modern terms, guess it is, especially as we have a minium wage, if getting at least that minium wage then no.

http://www.youthfightforjobs.com/

Although, not according to Sir Stuart Rose (ex head of M&S) who started his working life, er, stacking shelves and cleaning floors…

You missed the bit at the end of that quote which was ‘for one day’.

Although, not according to Sir Stuart Rose (ex head of M&S) who started his working life, er, stacking shelves and cleaning floors…

Did he do it for free?

Probably not, but then who will be doing that? (Hint: “Unpaid”)…

TBH the whole thing keeps me up at night. I finish my placement next month, and I’m back to college, but my employer has said I’m the last placement they’ll do, they can’t afford to do more. My boss has said he’d have me back, but in my final interview with the MD she said it’s unlikely they’d be recruiting.

Part of my job is doing my boss’ emails and no word of a lie I see maybe 4-5 cv (we’re not advertising) coming every day, and I’m told to just delete them. There was a warehouse job here a couple of months back, they must have had 200+ applications, and he was just deleting everyone straight from school, it was depressing.

I’ve got a year more of college, and I can see myself stacking shelves for free at the end of it TBH.

depressing.

unpaid work you are compelled to do is like slave labour it is in fact prohibited by the same international law and is correctly called forced labour . The terms and conditions of the current ” work fare ” are a tad more lax though . Still wrong in principle though every free workfare placement is one less “real job” so one more jobseeker not being placed … If it can lead to a real job it should start as one.

still not too sure on this one, guess it depends on the details. Possibility of getting your foot in the door somewhere, doing a good job getting noticed etc.

Alternativley some big companies get free labour and that’s one less job available to job seekers.

I’m very dubious at the moment tho and it currently sounds like slave/forced labour and freebies for big companies.

you are being disingenuous woppit

camerons employment tsar has been breaking her balls to get people back to work through schemes like this- shes only taking a few tens of mill a year of government money to get that 9% success rate
with the torys steering us back into new highs of unemployment this has to be a good thing

i say make them work for free, feed them bread and water and keep them in the coal cellar

I’d like to see some stats on what percentage of placements lead to full time positions. I reckon I could hazard a good guess.

Whats happening is that we as taxpayers are now underwriting the profits of companies like Tesco by supplying them with unpaid staff.

…and that taxpayers’ money is actually reducing the chances of people finding work. With a steady stream of unpaid labour available why pay for workers? Shoudn’t ‘work experience’ cover the whole experience of working? As in getting paid a wage and having a secure job?

lazy buggers need to work to prove their worth. I would hire someone who showed initiative and got off thier arse to prove themselves. I wouldnt hire the feckless excuse makers.
simple.

Technically Slaves weren’t on benefits,

Dunno about anyone else, but if I was stacking shelves for heehaw. I’d be liberating those shelves at the same time.

If work needs done, it should be paid at atleast minimum wages.

Who’s a lazy bugger? Someone who won’t be used as scapegoat cheap labour? Even Ken Clark’s prison work scheme pays a better wage than this so-called ‘work experience’.

Wahaaaaaaaaay! Its gone – somewhat inevitably – all Daily Mail!!!!

If you think that the close to 3 million unemployed out there are all feckless excuse makers, then i think you may want to re-familierise yourself with the real world. Trying to find a job it the moment is a soul-destroying, thankless trail of rejection after rejection.

How going to work unpaid in Poundland for a few weeks changes this is utterly beyond me

The company I worked for during summers started taking in unpaid “work experience” people on this scheme. They would take someone for a few weeks at a time then get rid of them and bring more people in they didn’t have to pay.

It meant they could cut the employed staff like me who had been working really hard at the job over four summers. You know….people honestly grafting for money. I put up with verbal abuse and pans being thrown at me for four summers and the other university holidays knowing that I’d always have a job there when I got back from uni.

I ended up unemployed because of this. Genius **** idea, the scheme is only increasing unemployment.

Nothing wrong with getting people to work for their benefits in principle but I can see how that might mean say Tesco need to hire less people into proper jobs. Certainly nothing wrong with showing people that it’s good to get out of your bed in the morning…..as above though, lot of unemployed at the moment are anything but feckless.

Slave labour it is not…..

Slave labour it is not…..

Yes it **** is, it’s directly undermining those of us who genuinely try to work hard to earn money.

If it’s unpaid it should be done with nationalized services such as the NHS, Fire Service or Military. Not private **** companies.

And it may well fall foul of this…

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/slavery_servitude_and_forced_or_compulsory_labour/

If you think that the close to 3 million unemployed out there are all feckless excuse makers, then i think you may want to re-familierise yourself with the real world.

Where did I speak for every unemployed person?
I mentioned lazy feckless people but you presumed I meant everyone?
I’ve been in the unemployed position, and found it tough, I also had to work my way back up quite a few rungs on the ladder to get to where I had previously been.
I didn’t complain or make excuses.
And i’ve never bought tha Daily Mail.

From what I can tell/have seen, the people undertaking these new roles and generally the type that need weeks of training to learn how to stack a shelf, as theyve had little or no experience of anything like work before.
I do tend to agree that it should be a public service position however.

What really pisses me off is listening to Cameron et al banging on about job snobbery when there were plenty of people doing shit jobs who have now had their hours eaten into or been made unemployed by this scheme.

Don’t Tesco and the like only take these people on for a couple of weeks at a time. Given they will probably need to be trained or supervised they won’t take one full time employees job.

There are obviously some flaws but one of the reasons Tesco is prepared to make the effort is the lack of cost and then the benefit to them. If they actually had to pay people minimum wage then they would get full time staff rather than lots of people for a short period of time as it would be more cost effective.

One of the biggest barriers to getting work is never having had a job before or being long term unemployed. This could go someway to alleviating that problem. However, many big names are pulling out due to the negative press/left wing propoganda they are receiving.

Incidentally I did work experience at school, was that slave labour or part of my education?

They are also getting paid through benefits so it’s hardly like they are working for free is it.

Now They are indoctrinating our children…

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/become_a_slave_at_fishbourne_roman_palace_1_3560396

I was out of work for 20 months until finding a job last April. 1000+ applications made. 2 temporary jobs (one of a week one of 3 weeks) taken which were a pain in the arse as it screwed up my benefits claims needing lots of work putting in to get sorted afterwards. I took them 1. in the hope they might be a foot in the door (they weren’t), 2. To have something to put on my CV as the ever widening gap from last employment was worrying, 3. to get me out of the house.

DON’T think everyone claiming “dole” is a work shy fop. There are a LOT but there are also a LOT of people desperate for work. I suspect the ones who want work will be the majority of the ones being “exploited” by this work fare scheme and the dossers will carry on as per usual.

It’s by no means slavery but it is not (IMHO) doing anything to address the job shortage in this country.

Still that woman from A4e decided it was good enough to pay herself £8M+ in dividends. Thanks god its only the jobless that rip this country off.

If they actually had to pay people minimum wage then they would get full time staff rather than lots of people for a short period of time

kind of the point many here are making no? ie real jobs for people not a load of free work from interchangeable “workers” from the currently very large unemployed pool.

Previous schemes such as YOP, YTS, and the Community Programme (which actually paid a poor wage) failed. They were expensive to run, and didn’t result in many sucessful outcomes.

If they actually had to pay people minimum wage then they would get full time staff rather than lots of people for a short period of time
kind of the point no? ie real jobs for people not a load of free work from interchangeable “workers” from the currently very large unemployed pool.

No, they are trying to tackle the more difficult group of long term unemployed and never been employed. At least that’s what they should be doing. In all likely hood they are probably forcing people to work who have been made redundant and were actively lookg for a job anyway.

There is a good idea in there, I’m just sceptical as to whether the government could execute it.

ohnohesback – Member
Previous schemes such as YOP, YTS, and the Community Programme (which actually paid a poor wage) failed. They were expensive to run, and didn’t result in many sucessful outcomes.

Previous failure is not a reason to give up.

ohnohesback – Member
Previous schemes such as YOP, YTS, and the Community Programme (which actually paid a poor wage) failed. They were expensive to run, and didn’t result in many sucessful outcomes.

And the current one is no more successful than doing nowt.

jonba so keep the scheme but only push it on the no-hopers? I can see some merit in that, but unfortunately still reducing the amount of “proper” jobs.

But an even better reason not to repeat the error on a grander and more expensive scale.

I echo jonba’s comments. In principle there may be some merit to the idea if it provides someone who’s never worked with a bit of structure and get’s them used to working etc. From an employers viewpoint temps can be a pain to bring into an organisation as they need training before they are fully contributing etc. The work placement people are unlikely to to be taking full time jobs in most organisations.

So on the plus side it may give some people some genuine work experience and at least something to put on their CV.

The downside is that if you need this sort of support you’re probably already way down the list of most employers most wanted listed (not necessarily through any fault of the individual), so it’s not really going to make any difference.

if we were in a full employment situation but there were people who weren’t suitable for work it might help some of them actually get into work and hold a job down but we’re not in that situation.

The big elephant in the room the politicians don’t want to acknowledge is that there aren’t enough jobs for those with the right skills and attitude and there are still a significant minority who don’t have the right skills and attitude. So for these people (either category) the question is should we expect them to work for their benefits if they are able? Not simple though as we have to ensure any work carried out is additional to that which the economy would have otherwise taken care of. Then of course you have the moral dilemma as to whether it’s right to make people work for their benefits. I still think the welfare state is based upon a model that is forty to fifty years old and hasn’t moved in line with the social expectations of a modern society.

If anyone is interested in looking at the workfare system in more details, this is a good book:

Workfare States by Jamie Peck

This scheme is the sort of thing pioneered in the US in the 1990s. It had the same problems then as the new one does.

When there are so many people out of work who actually want to work, focusing on the long time entrenched unemployed is just a waste of money and resources.

It would be much more productive to channel those resources into helping those who want to work as a priority, It just wouldn’t give politicians the opportunity to blame victims and create hatred that shifts focus from the real problems.

Creating a permanent workfare underclass, trapped in workfare because workfare displaces the ‘leg-up out of poverty’ jobs that they might have been able to take. How would that be an improvement on the structural unemployment that the UK has suffered for the past thirty years or more?

I’d take issue on the YOP / YTS claims above. It was through this that I got a foot in the door into full time employment. It also worked for a good number of friends of mine.

There would have been nowhere near as much fuss about this if the work people were made to do was socially useful/beneficial/not for profit.

And the whole A4E thing is an absolute disgrace, one the Sun etc seem strangely quiet on, given that they are effectively a publicly funded quango – except their boss and shareholders take millions and millions in dividends while not getting people back into work and fraudulently claiming they are.