Slave labour in the Uk exists - official!

[Geometer]

The purpose of such work is to give experience and keep a work ethic, it's training.

Surely an important part of the "work ethic" is the principle of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work". I don't know whether it's enshrined in law or not, but it's a right that working people have been struggling for, for at least 200 years. If you deny it to someone just because they're unemployed, then you undermine every labour and social reform of the last two centuries, and create a dangerous precedent.

We recently had a student work for us for "free", cept it actually cost us money in all the time spent teaching him stuff as that outweighed what he put back in. Which we knew beforehand and have no problem with, but titz like you would stop working for "free".

Was he there voluntarily, or was he press-ganged off the dole queue?

She got a degree in an area where there are no jobs, which is why she is now still working in a supermarket and not in archaeology, sending her to work in pound-land was only trying to force her to do what she should have been doing anyway, getting a job wherever she could.

Actually, her degree is in geology, arguably a more important field than archaeology, and certainly a more important field than shelf-stacking, given that an understanding of geology underpins our entire, oil-based, economy.

 

[ajstoneservices]

Actually, her degree is in geology, arguably a more important field than archaeology, and certainly a more important field than shelf-stacking, given that an understanding of geology underpins our entire, oil-based, economy.

And yet it hasn't brought her an offer of employment has it.

 

[ellal]

Actually, her degree is in geology, arguably a more important field than archaeology, and certainly a more important field than shelf-stacking, given that an understanding of geology underpins our entire, oil-based, economy.

And yet it hasn't brought her an offer of employment has it.

possibly because of that other slave labour policy - internship!

big business loves a recession/depression...

 

[Norcon]

We had an ee guy for 6 years on £20 quid a day.
Fantastic worker too. Was that slave labour?
He seemed happy enough. It's more than the dole at the end of the day.

 

[AronSearle]

Utter bo***ks. The purpose of this scheme is to make money out of those unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work.

As I said in my last post, the DWP expect a person to be available for work.

Sorry, I shan't waste my time discussing minute details of legislation.

The dole is there to help tide you over whilst you find work, not so that you can go work for free in a museum and refuse to look for paid work elsewhere, trying to make her work in pound land was a way to drive home that point.

Millions have to work in **** jobs they hate to pay the bills, they don't get the luxury of working somewhere they want for free and get benefit, and feck should they pay taxes so someone else can.

Before I took up my present position, I was asked by the company I work for to do some voluntary work for them. The DWP told me it was against their rules to even consider voluntary work as I wasn't then available for work. I pointed out to them that I was being offered a job, and the blind ****ts at the DWP, still couldn't see further than the script in front of them.

You mean to say government departments are inept and aloof, why I never!

Not only do you not get the point about slave labour

As for 'employing' somebody for 'free' but saying it 'cost you'...

Why bother employing anyone at all if a freebie costs you more than your business can extract?

Sounds to me the freeloader is you!

We took on the student to give him valuable experience, y'know doing a nice thing, I don't know how you draw such silly conclusions from that.

 

[AronSearle]

Actually, her degree is in geology, arguably a more important field than archaeology, and certainly a more important field than shelf-stacking, given that an understanding of geology underpins our entire, oil-based, economy.

And yet it hasn't brought her an offer of employment has it.

But but but....

YOU should and millions of other people should work and pay taxes in jobs they hate, so that she doesn't have to, HOW DARE YOU suggest she should work in a menial job like a dirty peasant until she finds work in her chosen field.

Your getting ideas above your station peasant, GET BACK TO WORK and pay your taxes so your betters don't have to dirty themselves with such lowly work!

 

[joinerjohn]

We had an ee guy for 6 years on £20 quid a day.
Fantastic worker too. Was that slave labour?
He seemed happy enough. It's more than the dole at the end of the day.

Bit of a difference though Norcon. These people were quite literally on nothing, having been told if they didn't attend their benefits would be stopped.
How much work did Poundland get done for zero cost?
At what saving to the company?
How many other "Slaves" did they con out of the DWP ?

 

[Geometer]

And yet it hasn't brought her an offer of employment has it.

You can't infer anything from that; we're in the middle of a recession, the worst recession the world's seen sice the 1930s. Nobody's hiring.

What you can say, with a high degree of certainty, is that when Ms Reilly got her part-time supermarket job, it was at the expense of a substantial number of less talented, less well-educated, less aspirational, but equally deserving, candidates who are still on the dole.

 

[chapeau]

First question nowadays for anybody who makes a point of telling us they have a degree is where from.

The dole is for tiding people over, some people have paid in, some people haven't. I have more sympathy for people who have paid in. Somebody who has just left uni won't have paid a lot in.

I reckon these employers should top up to minimum wage, otherwise it's just the taxpayer subsidising business 100%, and I don't want my taxes to be doing that.

There really should be the potential of a job at the end of it.

However I am all for forcing certain people to get out of bed in the morning and do some work. I suspect there is a long list of people I would force out of bed before this lady, who did appear to be getting out of bed to go to volunteer. However she didn't complain about the museum not paying her, so she comes over as has having double standards.

Suggesting it's slave labour though is laughable.

 

[Geometer]

The dole is there to help tide you over whilst you find work, not so that you can go work for free in a museum and refuse to look for paid work elsewhere, trying to make her work in pound land was a way to drive home that point.

You're making a very sweeping assumption there. What evidence do you have that Ms Reilly "refused to look for paid work elswhere"?

I've been following this case closely over the last year, and at no time has anybody - not the Government, not the DWP, not the Press, not the judiciary - suggested that she wasn't making every reasonable effort to find employment in her own field, or any other.

You do your credibility no good at all by making such baseless and prejudiced assertions.

 

[gregers]

get them all to fill in the bloody pot holes in the roads,christ there getting worse.

why cant they do some form of help in the community,clearing,sweeping etc

 

[Graeme1983]

Its wrong on so many levels.

If people are put to work for their benefits they could at least be used in the public interest, not to benefit corporations like Tesco getting free labour. Then there is the factor that they are denying somebody else a paid job stacking shelves.

Its a fallacy that a geology graduate and a HGV driver, both skilled professions should "gain experience" stacking shelves.

Ive got a sh**load of broken concrete and old slates that need shifting into a trailer and dropping off at the rubble yard where they use it as hard core, maybe the UK govt could send me a few people over to "gain some experience" as labourers and couriers.

I wouldnt dream of it, I wouldnt even employ poor gypsy labour or the Ukrainian immigrants we have without paying them the going rate. Honest days pay for an honest days work.

IDS is a nob. Just massaging the figures taking people off the unemployment list when they are in these slave schemes and telling you that unemployment is falling, then why is the economy still shrinking? Because the jobs created dont actually pay people, no money sloshing around the system on houses, cars, clothes, consumer goods. Just pay cuts, redundancies and the threat of losing your job causing you to be thrifty.

 

[Geometer]

get them all to fill in the bloody pot holes in the roads,christ there getting worse.

why cant they do some form of help in the community,clearing,sweeping etc

Speaking as one of "them", I can assure you that I'd be only too happy to do such work, as long as I'm paid what the work is worth.

 

[Danoil]

Surely, giving her work in pound land is effectively giving her the chance to earn her benefits? How is this wrong??

Now, I don't fully understand this but how I see it is the sticking point for her was she was already doing voluntary work somewhere else.

Same horse different jockey.

That is to say, she was effectively earning her job seekers allowance (note. The Dole doesn't not exist anymore) just not at a government approved placement. And of course they don't like it when you don't do as you are told do they.

DWP would have got much better response in my opinion if they had set up these schemes in charity shops, museums etc instead of multi million pound organisations which I have no doubt see it as free labour.

 

[AronSearle]

You're making a very sweeping assumption there. What evidence do you have that Ms Reilly "refused to look for paid work elswhere"?

1. Whilst she is working for free for the museum and being paid for by the JSA, she is not job searching.

2. The work scheme is for the long term unemployed +9 months.

You do your credibility no good at all by making such baseless and prejudiced assertions.

Take the above two facts and ask yourself if it's such a leap to make?



There ARE people that need kicking up the bum to get a job, that do need to be forced to do such things or will just bum around, you either do nothing, or do something, but if you do something (and this is something) you will always punish the good with the bad.


Ask yourself why cait reilly is the one who is getting her names splashed around everywhere, why she is appearing on shows and in interviews harking on about "forced labour", for being asked to work for two weeks at pound-land.

Why her and not the guy who was asked to work for 6 months, hmmm......