It’s an absolute travesty! We’ve got a nation of people in the midst of a big squeeze, they’re creaming off billions world-wide and we’re fucking footing the bill of them hiring bloody slave workers!
The very people that can afford to take on staff are stiffing the people. This is absolutely outrageous. I can only hope this is some kind of mistake. I’m never shopping there again. They can stick their corporation right up their arse!
It doesn’t really surprise me. I bet you from Tesco’s point of view they are doing that person a favour, that person who has probably never had a job, no experience, no qualifications, from their point of view the type of person that they would never hire, except in these circumstances to give them a “chance” to earn some experience.
To the rest of us, we can only sigh and say…yes this is what happens when you squeeze the unemployed so hard that employers can offer whatever travesty of justice they think fit as wages and the Government basically forces you to take the job or the alternative is to have absolutely nothing.
If you are unskilled you are stuffed.
I do think this is a liberty though, its disgusting, but we knew it was going to happen.
Presumably Tesco night shift involves stacking shelves and pushing pallets around the warehouse. Not exactly the kind of thing that requires a great deal of training and if they’re no good, I’m sure Tesco will have them out the door in no time.
I’m not saying shelf stackers should be on big money but that is disgusting. I take it the taxpayer foots the bill rather than Tesco? We might as well open a state supermarket if we’re going to pay Tescos wages for them.
As I understand it you can work 16 hours a week without losing your jobseekers allowance so for 16 hours a week at minimum wage. you should earn almost £100 more than somebody working full time (I assume?) at Tesco on this system.
The job has gone, so I can’t really see what was said, but…I don’t see the problem?
People shouldn’t get money for doing nothing, unless they aren’t actually able to do a thing. So if I was in charge of the whole job thing, I would make these types of jobs available too.
Let’s just say you have some oik who doesn’t want to work and is happy just getting his benefits, forcing someone like that to take a job like this is a good move (providing of course, that if he walks away from it that you then take away the benefits he receives). So here is the oik’s options, 1) walk away and lose the job seekers, 2) think, sod this and actually go and get a job that pays properly, or 3) use it to gain some kind of experience, which then allows them to apply for a better job when it becomes available.
I did YTS when I left school, I worked in a garage for 55 hours a week and got paid £40 a week (72p an hour). I had to get a part time job delivering pizzas, where I worked 4 nights a week, so with tips, I was making about £150 a week from that. So all in all I was doing about 80 hours a week for my £190 (£2.35 an hour).
What that taught me was what it means to work hard and it was tough, but I learnt some good lessons from it.
So why not, it’s a start, and if a start is what you really want then it’s not forever, it’s just for now.
Most ‘work experience’ programs are actually just free labour - somehow we have come to believe that it is acceptable to get someone in for no money (or next to no money) to do a job on the promise that that job may become permanent in the future. It’s complete and utter b*llocks…
Ok, so if you were an employer and you had a job on offer sweeping the car park and keeping a warehouse tidy and you got 2 CVs in for it. Both applicants are 21, one has never worked before, so left school and has done nothing for 5 years, but the other has worked hard for next to no money in schemes as above.
Which one shows more initiative and the right mentality for work, and which one doesn’t?
That’s half the problem these days, everyone wants everything handed to them on a plate and they don’t believe that they should have to prove that they are worth investing in. It’s almost as if employers should be grateful to have them and not that the employee should be grateful to have a job!
Now I know that there are a lot of employers out there who will take the p1ss in times like this, but believe me, when things are better, that mentality will come back to bite them.
I don’t disagree that doing that work will put you in better stead, I find it disgusting that any employer would expect someone to work for them for no money! It’s the same argument you made about everyone wanting everything handed to them. Why should employers expect to get work done for free?
What about this example.
2 kids finish uni, both having had the same part time jobs and having finished are both looking for a full-time job in the media industry. One has loads of money so can afford to work 6 months unpaid in the media industry, other has to support himself so takes up a role as bar staff… who do you think is likely to get that job at the end of 6 months?
I got my current job because I have 19 years of essoteric specialist experience in a related field and JUMPED AT THE CHANCE for a one-month, un-paid internship. This was about a year ago, and guess what? I’m a permanent salaried employee working in the heart of London. I consider myself to have been incredibly fortunate.
From the employer’s side, yes, they’re giving somebody a chance and yes, it’s low risk for the employer, but hiring people is very risky. From the hiring desk, anybody who’s at least been doing something will, all else being equal, look much much more attractive than someone who’s been spending his/her time at the pub waiting for his/her luck to change.
I don’t really see the problem.
Also, don’t forget, Tesco is just trying to satisfy their shareholders which, when you drill down, is anybody with a retirement fund, meaning all of us.
I’m tired of people pointing fingers at corporations. Yes, they need to be monitored and controlled, but ultimately business is about making a profit for the shareholders, who are, really, the fabeled 99%.
I am not in favour of unpaid work, or work experience when it provides no satisfactory experience. Why do governments think 6 months is ok if job adverts then demand 12 months on the form?
But I had a friend who did this work at Tesco after years of unemployment (paid work) and it was a career path as after a year or so they groomed him for management as he fit the bill. So there is a ladder to climb unlike other stack and fill work. My friend left Tesco’s aided by the fact he was working into better paid work in the Post Office.
My other corporate grudge isn’t the low end scale of wages they pay. After all someone has to play 3rd and 4th violin in the orchestra. It is when they hand out extreme bonuses and wages for the top end of the staff food chain. To me it defeats the object of keeping prices low on the shelves if your feeding the fat cats money they don’t need which could be used for savings, or more low paid staff, or giving the school trainee a minimum wage.
tesco are a **** company and tighter than a ducks arse, asda or sainsbury or waitrose are porobably a better company to work for than tesco if your a shopfloor level.
I got my current job because I have 19 years of essoteric specialist experience in a related field and JUMPED AT THE CHANCE for a one-month,
So you worked 19 years at Esso?
silentwalker wrote
My other corporate grudge isn’t the low end scale of wages they pay. After all someone has to play 3rd and 4th violin in the orchestra. It is when they hand out extreme bonuses and wages for the top end of the staff food chain. To me it defeats the object of keeping prices low on the shelves if your feeding the fat cats money they don’t need which could be used for savings, or more low paid staff, or giving the school trainee a minimum wage.
It probably/likely depends on the corporation, your own skills, how you conduct yourself, etc. I now work in a fairly large corporation, everything before were SMEs (no individual company had more than max 55 employees), and in this corp. get paid much better, have more benefits, more career path options, etc.
However as mentioned above, skills are important indeed. If your skills are window cleaning etc., you can chose to continue just that, or try and pull your socks up and get cracking on some more skills, either through various unpaid job ads, or otherwise (even by learning it yourself in spare time and go out from there…)
I personally don’t really see the issue, you take somebody who is struggling to get a job and then give them a job, yes it’s a job and it’s **** pay but a job is a job, at the end of the day it is something for them to put on their CV, gets them experience and the outcome from it is probably worth a lot more just from a CV point of view, not taking into account the increase self esteem that people will have from having a job. One of the biggest complains at the moment from people without a job is that their self confidence has been shot due to not having a job and it’s making it difficult for them to get work, as they feel worthless and this would restore that confidence…
Because what you’re doing is taking advantage of the fact that someone doesn’t have a job to pay them way below what you would expect to pay someone else. Because if JSA is £70/week (never received it so still an assumption) and you get them to work 3x8hr shifts (can’t see job spec but just making an assumption) that works out at £2.91 per hour… And this is for a job that has a particularly anti-social nature to it, has been proven that people who don’t get regular evening sleep suffer in the future (so should be compensated at a premium).
I had to do lot’s of unpaid/low paid work to gain experience in becoming a fully-fledged designer. When I left uni I wasn’t really that skilled yet, and needed more tutoring and practice to get to a level that would earn a company profits. Yes, it did suck and I had knuckle down and bite the bullet, but there is nothing wrong with honing your skills unpaid or for a low wage for a while. I shows commitment and a willingness to learn and will lead to better things in the end.
The reality is that only about 10m people own a private pension, whether paid into entirely privately or with a workplace contribution, and about 5m pay into a public services pension.
This would amount to about 50% of the workforce. Which amounts to less than 50% of the population.
So that fabled 99% of “us” actually amounts to 25% of the population.
So it would appear that the rest of us are getting screwed over by corporations for the minority. Not the 99% you claimed.
Unless you are claiming that the UK Government invests heavily into the Stock Market in order to pay the pension fund bill. If you are, please provide some proof.
Yes I am in the same boat, if I take pupillage the pay will be £12k a year and I will be working easily 50 hour weeks. Work it out at an hourly rate if you can be arsed.
BUT…and this is a VERY big but…in BOTH our cases, you were learning a trade/skill that will gain you much better wages in the future.
This is training for a job that will pay minimum wage. So just pay minimum wage.
Same goes for Rich earlier. Yes apprenticeships have notoriously paid badly because you are learning a trade, a skill that gives you the opportunity to earn well in the future. You are basically giving up a little now for a benefit later on.
It is no different to being a student, I was living on £9k a year as a Student, but it has the potential to benefit me.
What great skill and trade is being learned from stacking shelves? What great benefit is this going to provide in the future? What better jobs will this lead to?
At best it will lead to another job stacking shelves at minimum wage.
I have worked at places for nothing just to get the experience. The trouble sometimes is employers look for experience yet if you don’t have it but want to do the job you won’t get it, so how do you get experience if no one will employ you? You work for nothing or commission only or at a reduced rate. If you only have to do it for 6 months at least you are gaining the experience you want and then when you do find a similar job you can explain what you have been doing.
I don’t agree that people on benefits that are not actively looking for work should keep getting their money. Give them a year max and after that they lose half their benefits. There are jobs out there just not the ones you might normally apply for. Mind you saying that i hate it when you are told that you are “over qualified”, they should be fecking greatful you applied for the job haha
I don’t see the problem then with what Tesco are doing. Work nights and still have the daytime to go to interviews and get a better job.
I don’t think that’s the case Kaos. It’ll be a start. It’s down to the person to make the most of it and if the person has an ounce of sense, opportunities will arise and they will be able to better themselves.
Did YOUR low paid duties include nothing but menial tasks where you learnt nothing? No, nor will mine. If they did you wouldn’t be gaining a benefit. The whole point of those low paid positions is to teach you something new, which you can then use to your benefit. You are gaining something of value. Stacking shelves is not gaining something of value.
Your suggestion PJ is what has lead to this discussion, because that is exactly what is happening now. Some poor kid on JSA is being forced to work for expenses for a multi-billion pound corporation on the threat that a failure to go to work for nothing will mean benefits will be cut.
Great, what a great way to move forward, allowing corporations to exploit our population at a time when unemployment is at 2.6 million.
Lets just repeal the child labour laws and be done with it, at least we can be competitive in the manufacturing industry again.
