Stupidity for the benefit of nobody: UK to force young unemployed people to work for no pay
Under the threat of losing their benefits, which amount to a paltry £53/week, young people in the UK are being bullied into working for no pay for supermarkets and budget stores. The stupidity of this boggles my mind.
Not only are these young people being given a deeply negative working experience but the roles they are filling could (and should) be paid positions. The UK has instituted a low-wage top-up scheme called Working Tax Credit largely to make these marginal jobs viable and now they are forcing people to work there for nothing.
The advertised carrot, with the threat of penury being the unadvertised one, is the chance of an interview at the end of eight weeks unpaid work, and several stores have multiple unemployed young folks competing to be the best floor sweeper in order to win the job at the end of this farrago.
The young woman in the picture above has recently received a BSc in geology and the best we can offer her is unpaid work in a Poundland store. What message are we sending out to our young people with this kind of treatment?
